Real time communication in a virtual environment

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions encoded there on that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform steps comprising:

• presenting a virtual environment to a plurality of users of a virtual reality system;
• presenting, in the virtual environment, a virtual payment object associated with a first user of the plurality of users;
• presenting, in the virtual environment, a virtual payment processing object associated with a second user of the plurality of users, wherein the virtual payment object is configured to interact with the virtual payment processing object to initiate a real payment;
• associating the virtual payment object with a real payment object;
• associating the virtual payment processing object with a real payment processing service;
• detecting an interaction in the virtual environment between the virtual payment object and the virtual payment processing object;
• and
• responsive to detection of the interaction between the virtual payment object and the virtual payment processing object;
• receiving, via a real time communication (RTC) protocol, multimedia data and data describing the real payment object from a first VR device associated with the first user,
• selectively forwarding, via the RTC protocol and in a particular layer of a network that is below an application layer of the network, the multimedia data or the data describing the real payment object to a plurality of VR devices associated with a plurality of users, wherein a field in each data packet in the particular layer of the network indicates whether the data packet contains data describing a real payment object, and
• causing the real payment processing service to process a real payment from the real payment object associated with the first user to an account associated with the second user in near real time.

A computer system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform steps comprising:
• presenting a virtual environment to a plurality of users of a virtual reality system;
• presenting, in the virtual environment, a virtual payment object associated with a first user of the plurality of users;
• presenting, in the virtual environment, a virtual payment processing object associated with a second user of the plurality of users, wherein the virtual payment object is configured to interact with the virtual payment processing object to initiate a real payment;
• associating the virtual payment object with a real payment object;
• associating the virtual payment processing object with a real payment processing service;
• detecting an interaction in the virtual environment between the virtual payment object and the virtual payment processing object;
• and
• responsive to detection of the interaction between the virtual payment object and the virtual payment processing object;
• receiving, via a real time communication (RTC) protocol, multimedia data and data describing the real payment object from a first VR device associated with the first user,
• selectively forwarding, via the RTC protocol and in a particular layer of a network that is below an application layer of the network, the multimedia data or the data describing the real payment object to a plurality of VR devices associated with a plurality of users, wherein a field in each data packet in the particular layer of the network indicates whether the data packet contains data describing a real payment object, and
• causing the real payment processing service to process a real payment from the real payment object associated with the first user to an account associated with the second user in near real time.