Re: [mmox] Creating walled gardens considered harmful

["Mystical Demina" <[e-mail]>]

My thought about an approach is we think more abstract and set up the tools
that can be used to integrate virtual worlds.  To me this means we think in
terms of sessions, coordinate systems and objects.  These are the building
blocks that people can then use to do things like teleporting, walking
around in another virtual world, etc.

1. Sessions
Any two computers that are going to talk to each other need to be able to
establish a connection and understand what services are available on the
other system. Probably need some kind of service discovery which probably
includes authentication and authorization although anonymous may be allowed
and full authorization may be given anyway.  Perhaps we say authentication
is below this layer and we don't get into it but authorization seems to be
involved here so we can discover what we are allowed to do.

2. Coordinate space
As part of the session the virtual world identity interface needs to exist
so that the type of coordinate space and units of measure can be defined.
The coordinate space will need to have a create object interface so that an
object of some given type can be created in this other space.  Coordinate
spaces probably have cameras to deal with, how they are defined.

3. Objects
Objects of given types, vertex based like OBJs, or type base like prims and
transformations that can be performed on them.  Objects then will have to
have interfaces to support additional actions.

To me teleporting is a macro process that will be made up of these
processes.  Like TCP/IP and HTML allowed the web pages of the internet to be
made seems these Sessions, Coordinate spaces and Objects are the things that
virtual worlds will be made from.

I believe all virtual words can be defined as sessions, coordinate spaces
and objects and as such OGP, LESS and any of the standards that we are
working with can be broken down to creating a sessions, defining a
coordinate space and creating an object of a give format there with
intefaces/motheds/events it supports.

If objects move between virtual worlds to me what is really happening is the
parent object is changing and as such an event of ParentChanged may need to
be handled to update the coordinate system as well as other details like
communications.  Do objects really know what virtual world they are in? Or
do they just know who their parent interface to interact with is.

I think for virtual worlds to be MMOX they will need to support a set of
object formats like OBJ or an agreed upon set of object types like prims and
the transformations as well as the textures or shaders to provide their
surfaces.

So perhaps the focus isn't on how to we teleport but on how do we define a
set of compatible sessions, coordinate spaces and objects that any
technology can implement.

Kevin Tweedy
SL: Mystical Demina





-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of
Larry Masinter
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 10:33 PM
To: Jon Watte; James Stallings II
Cc: MMOX-IETF
Subject: Re: [mmox] Creating walled gardens considered harmful

> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-jwatte-mmox-use-cases-00

"  The point is
   that interoperability does not require the source and the destination
   to be from the same technology family, use the same simulation
   technology, or even that the clients must understand protocols other
   than those native to the respective simulation system."

I don't understand how most of those use cases can be managed if
the source & destination have different simulation models, skeleton
structions, scripting languages, physics models, rendering engines,
etc.

>   The benefit is that users of different virtual worlds can invite and
>  communicate with each other using the virtual world metaphore,
>   regardless of the particular virtual world technology used for their
>   "home base" virtual world.

I think this is "if you can do A, then you can do A". Why would anyone
 want to do that, and how would it help them?

In section 2.2.1, the integration of a "plant" and a "city" requires
so many seams to be knit, I wonder how feasible it really is. Even
between virtual worlds with the same underlying infrastructure, welding
a "building" into a city requires a lot of work aligning, wouldn't it?

Just wondering how practical these use cases are.

Larry
--
http://larry.masinter.net

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