Group synchronization in networked virtual environments

This paper proposes two group synchronization schemes, which adjust the output timing among destinations, in networked virtual environments where voice and video streams are output in a 3-D virtual space. We introduce the concept of the global importance of each media object, which includes a voice stream and a video one. The global importance is determined by the positional relations among media objects, and it represents how strongly each object attracts observer's attention in the virtual space. We enhance a centralized group synchronization control scheme called the synchronization maestro scheme and a distributed control scheme, which were previously proposed by the authors, in order to adjust the output timing of media streams among destinations according to the global importance. In addition, we illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes by experiment.