Facilitating object searches in virtual worlds
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsSalvatore Branca, Paolo Cavazza
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A mechanism is provided for facilitating object search in a virtual world environment where each object is defined by a plurality of attributes and the search is performed on any attributes of the object however is not limited to a 3-D search. The co-ordinate location of each object in the virtual world is also provided in the search result and the range within which to perform the search may also be specified. Optionally, the user has the ability to teleport/transport to the location of the object using the search result.
Claims10
A method, in a data processing system, for facilitating object search in a virtual world environment including a plurality of objects, each object being defined by a plurality of attributes, the method comprising:
- selecting, via user input, a set of first object attributes on which to perform the search;
- defining for each first object attribute a desired value or a range of desired values;
- performing the search selecting a set of objects according to the user input thereby forming selected object;
- determining a relevance factor by performing a similarity comparison between the set of first object attributes and the plurality of attributes of each of the selected objects;
- and
- presenting the selected objects in a scaled down three-dimensional visual representation, scaled by a scale factor, showing the user's position and a location for the selected objects within the virtual world, wherein the selected objects are shown using x y, and z coordinates from the user's position, wherein the scale factor of the scaled down three-dimensional visual representation is based on a distance between the user's position and a farthest object of the selected objects, and wherein the scale factor is adjusted over a plurality of queries so that each scaled down three-dimensional visual representation utilizes a largest scale factor from the plurality of queries.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.