Scalable techniques for rendering emissions represented using segments of streaming data, the emissions being potentially perceivable from many points of perception and the emissions and the points of perception having relationships that vary in real time. The techniques filter the segments by determining for a time slice whether a given emission is perceptible to a given point of perception. If it is not, the segments of streaming data representing the emission are not used to render the emissions as perceived from the given point of perception. The techniques are used in networked virtual environments to render audio emissions at clients in a networked virtual reality system. With audio emissions, one determinant of whether a given emission is perceivable at a given point of perception is whether psychoacoustic properties of other emissions mask the given emission. The segments representing the streaming data also contain metadata which is used both in the filtering and in rendering the streaming data for a point of perception at which the emission is perceived.