3D virtual environment creation management and delivery system

DETAILED DESCRIPTION A system for the creation, modification and delivery of a virtual environment is one in which the virtual reality environment or scene is stored not in terms of files, but rather in a database format in which the virtual reality environment is divided and stored as different records in the database.
This allows multiple authors to work in different parts of the 3D environment, allows selected access to different parts of the 3D environment by different persons, allows version control, provides the ability to save changes, e.
g.
persistence, provides scalability, security and format control and independence, all by being able to work on separate parts of the virtual reality environment without disturbing other parts.
The use of the database permits indexing that provides quick access to various parts of the environment.
For instance, individual records or objects to be updated without affecting other records in the database present advantages over prior art systems.
Here the virtual environment is stored as a file, in that changes to different records can be made simultaneously, for example by two or more different creators, without affecting or writing over changes just made and allowing only these records which are changed to be updated.
This significantly reduces the required amount of network communication.
The use of the database permits solving problems of persistence, scalability, multi-edit capability, multi-resolution, multi-format and version control since various parts of the database can be queried, altered and outputted without regard to other parts.
It will be noted that persistence requires a nonvolatile, permanent storage, excluding RAM storage which is volatile, but including high density disk storage, which is both fast and nonvolatile.
It is also important to allow access and locking in a fine-grained manner to promote use by multiple users.
However, if the locking granularity is too large, e.
g.
not fine enough partitions, one author can lock up a large section of the 3D environment, while only modifying a small part of that environment