Sewing worlds together with SEAMs: A mechanism to construct complex virtual environments

This paper introduces the Spatially Extended Anchoring Mechanism (SEAM) as a 3-D user-interface metaphor to connect virtual worlds and manage scalabil ity in distributed virtual environments. SEAMs provide a visual and navigab le connection between worlds to manage both the complexity of rendering and network communication typically occurring in such environments. In the con text of augmented reality, SEAMs can be applied as a 3-D window interface. A rendering algorithm is described which performs well on the graphics acce lerators of standard personal computers.