Modeling Avatar Mobility of Networked Virtual Environments

Movement, one of the most common actions of avatars in virtual worlds, can have an important impact on the performance of networked virtual environments (NVEs). In this work, we propose SAMOVAR, a Statistical Area-based MObility model for VirtuAl enviRonments. SAMOVAR models four mobility characteristics: pause duration, velocity, area popularity, and distinct visited areas using empirical distribution; and then uses a map generation and a traveling procedure to generate movement trajectories of avatars. We show through simulation that the traces generated by our model can produce many mobility characteristics observed in virtual world. Further by comparing to trace-based simulation, the results obtained from SAMOVAR are similar to results obtained with traces from World of Warcraft and Second Life. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.