A Principled Approach to the Construction of Next Generation Dves: Structural Reflection: a Principled Approach to the Construction of Flexible Next Generation Dves

Distributed Virtual Environments (DVEs) are networked VR systems that support group work and whose central concept is one of a shared virtual world, i.e. a computer generated space where participants can meet and interact. To address the need that DVE middleware platforms offer adequate support to applications that run on the public Internet, DVE middleware platforms ought to meet six requirements. These include scalability, persistence, responsiveness, flexibility, maintainability and extensibility. This book argues that research efforts aimed at the implementation of mechanisms to address the first three requirements have largely been successful but, in contrast, much less focus has been put on addressing the flexibility, maintainability and extensibility requirements in contemporary DVE applications. Consequently, the author details the use of structural reflection as an approach that not only addresses the latter three requirements but also offers added value in the form of providing a framework for scalability, persistence and responsiveness that is in itself flexible, maintainable and extensible.