METHOD AND AN APPARATUS FOR PARTITIONING VIRTUAL WORLDS USING PRIORITIZED TOPIC SPACES IN VIRTUAL WORLD SYSTEMS, CAPABLE OF REDUCING COMPUTING RESOURCES USING PRIORITIZED TOPIC SPACE

摘要

PURPOSE: A method and an apparatus for partitioning virtual worlds using prioritized topic spaces in virtual world systems are provided to partition virtual worlds using prioritized topic spaces in a virtual world system to allow reliably partitioning a virtual world to increase scalability and permit dynamic load balancing.;CONSTITUTION: A world management system(17) includes a partitioner module(17a) for partitioning the map, and a load balancer(17b) for balancing the load between servers. The load balancing function can also be distributed among the servers. The distribution is based on the load balancing between the game engine servers. The invention involves using an externally computed management grid, based on key factors of the map (such as the bounding box data), and a prioritized topic space approach to implement a highly scalable virtual world solution that can be dynamically load balanced across a grid of servers. A method for hosting an online virtual world system on game engine servers, comprising: obtaining a map representing a virtual world in the game; partitioning the map into multiple partitions; and selecting a game engine server for each partition as responsible for executing the game for detected game entities in that partition, wherein the selection is based on load balancing between the game engine servers.;COPYRIGHT KIPO 2010