Capabilities Based Management of Virtual Area
AssigneeSococo, Inc.
InventorsRobert J. Butler, Matthew Leacock, David Van Wie, Paul J. Brody, F. Randall Farqmer
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Abstract
Apparatus and methods of managing a virtual area based on communicant capabilities are described. The communicant capabilities are updated based on rules in response to events in the virtual area. An action by one communicant can affect the capabilities of another communicant. Communicant capabilities can be stored in respective server-side proxies and the virtual area can be managed without transmitting any of the capabilities to the communicants' client network nodes. Capability-based permissions checks can be performed against communicant capabilities with wildcarded attribute fields.
Claims2
In a network communication environment in which communicants operating respective client network nodes connect to a virtual area in which ones of the communicants are able to establish respective presences, and the virtual area comprising objects, including avatar objects that represent the ones of the communicants who are present in the virtual area, a method comprising:
- for each of one or more of the communicants, maintaining a respective set of capabilities;
- responsive to at least one event in the virtual area, determining one or more changes in the sets of capabilities based on one or more rules;
- updating the respective sets of capabilities to reflect the determined changes;
- and
- managing the virtual area based on the updated respective sets of capabilities.
-58. (canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.