The causal surface and its effect on distribution transparency in a distributed virtual environment

One goal in the development of distributed virtual environments (DVEs) is to create a system such that users are unaware of the distribution-the distribution should be transparent. The paper begins by discussing the general issues in DVEs that might make this possible, and a system that allows some level of distribution transparency is described. The system described suffers from effects of inconsistency, which in turn cause undesirable visual effects. The causal surface is introduced as a solution that removes these visual effects. The paper then introduces two determining factors of distribution transparency relating to user perception and performance. With regard to these factors, two hypotheses are stated relating to the causal surface. A user-trial on forty-five subjects is used to validate the hypotheses. A discussion of the results of the trial concludes that the causal surface solution does significantly improve the distribution transparency in a DVE.