Re: [vwrap] one question

[Morgaine <[e-mail]>]

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Meadhbh Hamrick <[e-mail]>wrote;wrote:

>
>
> that's a very interesting point, morgaine. depending on your
> *definition of "virtual world"* you could go back a long way... maze war
> on PLATO was the first thing i saw that had the "feeling" of a virtual
> world.
>


It certainly looks like a virtual world to me, judging by this video of Maze
War on a Xerox Alto:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7chDIySXK2Q which is
from the same era.

Let's check it against my "*Definition of 'Virtual World', in a protocols
context*" from
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/vwrap/current/msg00319.html -- the
first sentence gave the definition, without reference to interop:


*For the narrow purpose of describing interoperability protocols for Virtual
Worlds, a Virtual World is defined as a perceptual mashup depicting media
elements located within a single virtual place based on data received by a
client application.*


Check list:

   - "perceptual mashup" -- Yes: the illusion is assembled in our minds.
   - "depicting" -- Yes: a picture or representation is being generated.
   - "media elements" -- Yes: the lines that depict walls, the eyes, and
   map.
   - "single virtual place" -- Yes: a single place, virtual, two
   perspectives.
   - "based on data received by a client application" -- Yes: very
   precisely.


My conclusions:

   1. Maze War constitutes perfect *prior art* for the concept of Virtual
   Worlds;
   2. The *perceptual mashup* definition of VW is robust to evolving
   technology.



Morgaine.






====================================

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Meadhbh Hamrick <[e-mail]>wrote;wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Morgaine
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > Well it goes without saying that VWs were never conceived as being Web
> apps,
> > that would have beeen horribly limiting.  That is a recent affectation,
> and
> > VWs have a long history that far predates the Web.
> >
>
> that's a very interesting point, morgaine. depending on your
> definition of "virtual world" you could go back a long way... maze war
> on PLATO was the first thing i saw that had the "feeling" of a virtual
> world.
>
> and maybe a maze war clone where your eyeball avatar can pick up and
> drop objects, rendered via WebGL would make a great, simple demo of
> bits of protocol under consideration here.
>
> -cheers
> -meadhbh
>