Utilising game server technology on fully distributed architectures for collaborative multi-user CAx applications

Abstract

Game server technology is readily available for the creation of massive multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft or Second Life. This game server technology provides services to authenticate users, load balance clients, share information across multiple servers, handle artificial intelligence services, and so on. By harnessing this collaborative software and integrating its capabilities with multi-user collaborative tools, a better real-time experience can be achieved than that provided by current collaborative tools, because of two significant factors that current multi-user tools cannot provide: scalability and low bandwidth consumption. This article presents a multi-user game server technology that was integrated with a real-time multi-user computer aided application (CAx) tool called NX Connect, to demonstrate how the game server technology can increase the capabilities of current multi-user software through these two capabilities.

Keywords:

• multi-user
• collaboration
• collaborative architectures
• game server
• MMO
• MMORPG

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by Brigham Young University and utilises open-source software developed by Nevrax (dev.Ryzom.com). The research was also funded by the National Science Foundation in partnership with the Industry University Collaborative Research Center (IUCRC) headed by Brigham Young University with industrial partners: Boeing, Spirit Aerosystems, Pratt and Whitney, PCC Airfoils, Microsoft and Belcan.