Subject: [mmox] Working towards broad applicability in virtual worlds

From: Morgaine Dinova <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:34:53 +0000

It's excellent to see the discussion about graphics interchange formats in
progress, because for the first time this takes us beyond the confines of
LL+AWG's work on a protocol (OGP) that tended to reflect only those entities
available in the Second Life universe.  While certainly not by intent, daily
contact with a single system tends to narrow one's worldview despite one's
best intentions, and might have reduced the goal of broad applicability to
the level of lip service.

With diversity in our ranks, this is unlikely to happen even by accident,
and hopefully IETF oversight will ensure that it cannot happen at all. :-)

I expect the process of extension and/or abstraction to happen at many
levels of MMOX work.

The Agent Domain concept from OGP had already begun to embrace diversity in
authentication and trust mechanisms, but needs to go much further.  Other
parties like realXtend have developed more advanced avatar concepts, and
Opensim have pioneered decentralized forms of organization.  We will have to
find common ground with both of them, and with every other party that
desires interoperation and is willing to work on ways to achieve it.

Beyond that, achieving the goals expected of an IETF standard will require a
strong focus on extensibility and flexibility even when our own systems do
not immediately require it.  Data interchange of many kinds will need to be
considered, not just 3D graphics but also 2D and vector formats, as well as
text, animation, sound and other media.  World objects will need to embrace
hierarchy, and not restrict object composition artificially to just a single
level of primitives.  World addressing will need to cater not only for
human-sized environments but also for micro worlds and galactic ones.  And
so on.

It's great to see that we have started this process already, at least in a
small way. :-)

Morgaine.