Re: [vwrap] Consensus? What exactly should be in the protocol

[Cristina Videira Lopes <[e-mail]>]

Cristina Videira Lopes wrote:
> You can dictate that. But then this will be completely irrelevant in a 
> couple of years when WebGL is actually usable or when Google finishes 
> their virtual machine for running safe native code on browsers.
...or when server-side streaming goes mainstream, and being in a virtual 
world is as simple as running a video player plus a few 
JavaScript/native back channels to the server.

First point is: according to the Web principles, each web application 
controls 100% what and how the client gets via this really powerful 
concept of hypermedia. It is unlikely that the world is going to adopt a 
standard that forces implementers to take several steps back on this 
kind of autonomy. The diversity is what gives service providers an edge.

The second point is: when we have all that variety of viewer 
implementations that are all equally accepted by the web browser, we are 
still to cope with portability of user agent simulation state between 
those worlds -- and that's the bottom line for interoperability of 
virtual worlds on the Web. I'm interested in this, because it's much 
more foundational than the variety of virtual world implementation options.