Re: [ogpx] A blog post from the HTML5/Websocket wars worth reading

[Carlo Wood <[e-mail]>]

I'm aware of all that, and I meant it in a mathematical way.
The only conclusion you should draw from my remark is that
the phrase "Second Life-like" has no place in any official
VWRAP document other than the "history" paragraph, once VWRAP
is finished.

As long we're still designing VWRAP, it's a useful term to
stay in-scope, though.

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 08:17:26AM -0800, Meadhbh Hamrick wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 6:12 AM, Carlo Wood <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
>     Agreed. SL should be VWRAP compatible, but there is no need
>     for another world that uses VWRAP to really be anything like SL.
> 
> 
> well.. actually.. yes there is. (and yes, no there's not.)
> 
> people familiar with the history of VWRAP will remember that before VWRAP, we
> had the MMOX BoF. MMOX was introduced with a "wide" charter. we wanted to try
> to get as many participants as possible, and introduce compatibility with as
> many existing systems as possible.
> 
> but guess what? it turned into an utter failure. the common ground between
> Second Life, Wonderland, Olive, Webkins, et al. was just too small to produce a
> meaningful specification.
> 
> at the end of the MMOX BoF, the suggestion was made that we have another BoF,
> but with a more limited scope. that's where the OGPX BoF came from. OGPX was an
> attempt to describe the "problem domain" that SL is the solution for. a number
> of us thought long and hard about the social and technical concerns SL
> addresses and were able to distill them into the charter and the intro and
> goals document.
> 
> so we may want to be careful when we say things like "there is no need for
> another world that uses VWRAP to really be anything like SL." it's COMPLETELY
> true that there could be a lot of things that don't need to be replicated. for
> instance, Second Life's use of the Linden game script or the particular way in
> which property is represented in SL (parcel, simulator, estate, etc.) 
> 
> but if you want to have a chance of interoperability, there must be basic
> constraints and processing expectations.
> 
> for example. 3d descriptions of assets (either as primitives, collections of
> nurbs, sculpties or meshes) are intended to be rendered. there is a use case
> that they be rendered as part of a 3d scene. yes, we may also have the use case
> of rendering them as part of a web page. or converting them into a JPEG and
> printing them on a mug at cafepress.com or ...
> 
> so yes. we should not place limitations on where an asset can be rendered. but
> we should understand that the asset data for a 3d object is intended to be
> rendered. it's not going to be used as the seed to a random number generator
> whose output is used to make stock purchase decisions or rendered as an audio
> stream. (well. sure. you could. but it SHOULDN'T be a supported use case.)
> 
> so getting back to the description of "Second Life-Like" as a way to describe
> VWRAP. this was actually the elevator pitch for OGPX... to determine the specs
> for "Second Life-Like" worlds. at the time it was a shorthand for describing
> how Second Life and OpenSimulator differed from projects like Olive or
> Wonderland. moving forward, this moniker will likely be both and impediment and
> a benefit. it's beneficial in that when someone asks what we're trying to do,
> we could simply say... "we're making specs for OpenSim-Like or SecondLife-Like
> worlds." but these descriptions carry baggage.
> 
> so it's true to a certain degree that there are no requirements that a virtual
> world that uses VWRAP look anything like Second Life(tm), Second Life (tm) and
> OpenSim were the exemplars of the class from which our requirements were drawn.
> so i think we'll see that "VWRAP worlds" will share a lot of similarities. or
> not.
> 
> but my point is that the stated objective of this group is work on protocols
> whose requirements and expected use are radically similar to that of SL and
> OpenSim. we no longer use the ostensive definition of "it has to be like Second
> Life(tm)." but if we produce a protocol that meets the requirements set down in
> the charter, we'll likely find we have something that is similar in many key
> respects to SL or OpenSim.
> 
> -cheers
> -meadhbh

-- 
Carlo Wood <[e-mail]>