Petri net model for subjective views in collaborative virtual environments

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) use a shared virtual world for interactions and collaboration among users. Most current CVEs provide a highly objective virtual environment. Some degree of subjectivity is necessary to support collaboration in virtual environments. Subjective views can provide benefits to users but they can also pose problems. The current generation of event-based software, languages, methods, and tools cannot serve virtual reality (VR) interfaces well. We propose a new approach to describe and implement multi-user VR interfaces that support subjective views. Petri net theory is the formalism selected to model a virtual world and to support subjectivity while providing consistent collaboration and interactions among users.