Subject: Re: [mmox] Learning from the past; focusing on the future

From: "Mystical Demina" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:49:13 -0500

Hi,

Seems to be this discussion on whether to support meshes or prims is
interesting but if the goal is to have an interoperable protocol between
systems that we should be looking at a higher level abstraction in which to
define the semantics between systems and talk in more general terms at first
such as defining a collection of abstractions of which there could exist an
object, objects could have a name, a type and a body or a reference to its
details.  The type would be something like the MIME type we use on web
pages.  Then it would be up to virtual worlds to support the MIME types that
they would like to support.  Could even get more complicated as things grow
for a system to make available a list of types it supports.  If Lindens
would like to have prims supported as one of those types they can submit a
MIME type and the specification for it.  Also to just say because most of
the work is meshes as well isn't the best either.  There are tons of mesh
standards, OBJ, etc.

I think until we define things in these terms the actual physical protocols
don't do us much good.

Seems there are some basic problems that could be tacked first like the URL
that define locations in a virtual world.  Can't teleport till we define
where we are teleporting to.  Once we can define a location then we can talk
about context and types of data that we wish to exchange.  There are a lot
of things that already exist in the web that I think we can look to
implement like anonymous access, cookies so when we return to a location we
don't have to log in again.

Kevin Tweedy

http://www.XRGrid.com <http://www.xrgrid.com/> 

SL: Mystical Demina

---

From: Jon Watte <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:28:15 -0800

Mystical Demina wrote:
>
> I think until we define things in these terms the actual physical 
> protocols don’t do us much good.
>

There have actually been a lot of those proposals on the list already. 
The reason we're talking about meshes vs prims is to make the point that 
/only/ specifying the mechanism is not sufficient to actually achieve 
interoperability; specifying a reliable minimum capability for each 
mechanism ("if you support the mechanism, you support at least this 
format") is necessary for actual interoperability. Meshes just turned 
out to be one of the illustrative examples of why this is so.

I think the /first/ thing we need to decide is whether we're building:

1) A protocol that lets some number of second-life derived client 
softwares cross-connect to some number of second-life derived services, 
possibly bringing along some number of second-life derived assets (I've 
heard proposals that boil down to this from a few people)

or

2) A protocol that lets significantly different virutal world systems 
interoperate to share in creating a single, bigger, more diverse 
simulation (Some other people, including me, are presenting proposals 
along these lines).

However, right now, I don't even think we know how to make that 
decision. We need to make this decision, so that the people who aren't 
interested in "the other" approach can properly decide where and how to 
spend time and resources.

Sincerely,

jw

Sincerely,

jw

---

From: Gareth Nelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:54:28 +0000

> 1) A protocol that lets some number of second-life derived client softwares
> cross-connect to some number of second-life derived services, possibly
> bringing along some number of second-life derived assets (I've heard
> proposals that boil down to this from a few people)
>
I think this is to be avoided, for obvious reasons (i.e SL-bias)

> interoperate to share in creating a single, bigger, more diverse simulation
> (Some other people, including me, are presenting proposals along these
> lines).
This is where the future lies

> However, right now, I don't even think we know how to make that decision. We
> need to make this decision, so that the people who aren't interested in "the
> other" approach can properly decide where and how to spend time and
> resources.
We definitely need more agreement on the basics of what kinds of world
and how specific the standards should be. There's a tradeoff between
biasing towards 1 kind of world and compatibility with all worlds.

---

From: Morgaine <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 08:31:06 +0000

> (Some other people, including me, are presenting proposals along these

I can't understand why you continue to raise the spectre that we're here to
rubberstamp SL standards.  We aren't.  I'm not aware of anybody with that
agenda.

The latest version #4 of the draft charter doesn't even mention OGP, because
we reworded it specifically to be vendor-neutral:
http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/mmox/current/msg00066.html .  And
please note that this was done with the Linden co-chair's approval, stated
desire, and encouragement.

Our #4 still mentions LLSD, admittedly, but if you think it's inappropriate
on either vendor-neutrality or on technical grounds then please pick up the
baton and give us draft charter #5.  I'm looking forward to it.

Our work is very explicitly targeted at embracing the needs of many diverse
worlds, hopefully far beyond merely those few worlds that currently have
representation here.

We are working in good faith towards your item 2), while noting that item 2)
means interop with "all" reasonable worlds, and that includes Linden
worlds.  It's not either/or, it's both.  Please grant us that, so that we
can actually make headway.

*(Proviso: your item 2) says **single ... simulation**, which is incorrect,
as we have no remit to straightjacket diverse worlds into a single
simulation.)*

Morgaine.

---

From: Jon Watte <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:14:36 -0800

Morgaine wrote:
> I can't understand why you continue to raise the spectre that we're 
> here to rubberstamp SL standards.  We aren't.  I'm not aware of 
> anybody with that agenda.
>

Because there are several people on this list who say "OpenSim and 
Second Life are already trying to do client interoperability; I think we 
should run with it and not worry about something bigger."
Similarly, I find that the current OGP proposal specifies some thing 
("Rezzing" of avatars) that are Second Life centric, while not 
specifying other things that would be necessary for an actually useful 
interoperable virtual world (like entity telemetry).

Similarly, if OGP is specified as a mostly empty vessel that can contain 
arbitrary negotiated data, what would probably happen would be that 
OpenSim puts OpenSim data in that vessel, and IMVU puts IMVU data in 
that vessel, and both claim to support "OGP interoperability" but you 
can't do anything useful through that claim. I want to avoid that outcome.
>
> We are working in good faith towards your item 2), while noting that 
> item 2) means interop with "all" reasonable worlds, and that includes 
> Linden worlds.  It's not either/or, it's both.  Please grant us that, 
> so that we can actually make headway.
>
> /(Proviso: your item 2) says /*single ... simulation*/, which is 
> incorrect, as we have no remit to straightjacket diverse worlds into a 
> single simulation.)/

What I mean by "single simulation" is what the user sees when connected 
to a specific, interoperating instance. I suppose the user could be 
connected to multiple of those, similar to opening multiple video 
streams in a media player, but then those generally have "nothing" to do 
with each other.

Okay, so if most of us agree on 2), can we just say we have "rough 
consensus" on that, and politely reject any attempt to steer the work 
towards 1)?

Sincerely,

jw

---

From: "Robert Gehorsam" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:30:23 -0800

I think part of the issue here with regard to the debate between broad
and narrow interoperability is that, other than Jon representing
Forterra's technical efforts, there are no other visibly participating
technical representatives from any other virtual world technology
providers or other relevant groups.  No one from Sun, Qwaq, Multiverse,
HiPiHi, Activeworlds, any of the browser-based folks, Twinity, any of
the game folks or kids worlds, Makena (the company that, contrary to
some folks' assertions, is the company that makes and operates
There.com), Proton Media, Icarus or its various partners, ECS, and so
forth.   I've seen references to Qwaq but haven't seen Greg or anyone
else from there participating here.   There are probably two dozen
companies that would be reasonable candidates for this discussion, not
to mention companies like Adobe, Google, Intel, Samsung, Sony and, yes,
even Microsoft, all of which might arguably have some interesting
contributions to make.

It may be that this lack of broad participation is creating -- fairly or
unfairly -- the sense that the conversation will naturally drift towards
an SL-OS orientation -- despite what I see as the best intentions of
many people here -- simply because, other than Forterra, no one else is
stepping up to the plate.   I can tell you that *that* is not something
that Forterra wants to see, because it's inherent in our view of the
evolution of the internet that interoperability between diverse virtual
worlds is essential for all to succeed.  So the imbalance in this
ongoing discussion creates a false dynamic of conflict when none is
intended.  Without broad input, how can we achieve broad
interoperability?  

Is there any outreach going on to these various organizations, or is
that somehow not part of the policy?  Not being really familiar with the
workings of these sorts of technical groups, I just don't know.

Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of
Jon Watte
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 4:15 PM
To: Morgaine
Cc: Mystical Demina; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [mmox] Learning from the past; focusing on the future

can't do anything useful through that claim. I want to avoid that
outcome.

Sincerely,

jw

_______________________________________________
mmox mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/mmox

---

From: Dan Olivares <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 16:35:36 -0500

I completely agree with you here.   Therefore, if this working group
is important to you (or anyone else here), I urge you to solicit
parties that you feel could make a significant contribution to a
MMO/VW standard.

Best Regards

Daniel Olivares

---

From: "Hurliman, John" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:09:34 -0700

I am representing Intel on this list and possibly at the BOF. My opinion is that there is a "wait and see" attitude across many industry and community partners, to see if a usable multi-platform spec is produced. As evidenced by the current discussion archives for MMOX, the amount of effort that it is taking to steer this in a vendor neutral direction is overwhelming. I had to rewrite the proposed charter just to keep the *definition of the group* from being written as a timeline to standardizing Linden Lab's protocol stack. The standardization of LLSD is embedded in the timeline, while myself and others have raised concerns about its utility in comparison to other competing IDLs.

While this discussion is going on, there is a risk of participation being perceived as consent. IBM's implementation of the first OGP teleport spec was added to the OpenSim codebase, and now OGP is touted as a joint effort between Linden Lab and the open source communities surrounding Second Life. I wrote an initial implementation of LLIDL, so I suppose under that definition LLSD/LLIDL is a joint effort between Intel and Linden Lab.

This could easily become a full time job for participants, and from what I can tell the only guaranteed output is that Linden Lab's LLSD/LLIDL/OGP technology will become standardized. Whether or not that stack is competitive with alternative proposals, or an alternative standard is proposed in parallel, is an open question. As Intel is not a virtual world vendor, and interested more in the wider technology landscape of virtual worlds it makes sense for me to be here. That doesn't apply to Qwaq, Multiverse, HiPiHi, ActiveWorlds, etc. who will lose nothing by ignoring the creation of a standard that doesn't provide any value to their platforms. Unless there is a clear return on the time investment it is unlikely that there will be broad industry participation.

John

>Robert Gehorsam
>Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 1:30 PM
>To: Jon Watte; Morgaine

---

From: "Meadhbh Hamrick (Infinity)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:10:26 -0800

yes. the purpose of the upcoming MMOX BoF session is to get people  
from a diverse collection of virtual worlds / MMOs in the same room at  
the same time to discuss:

a. is a working group a good idea?
b. if so, how should we constrain the problem domain?
c. if we can't agree on the same problem domain, does it make sense to  
have multiple working groups?

it is telling that the 74th IETF meeting is held during the same week  
and less than a mile away from this year's game developers conference,  
but it is not my place to commit representatives from the companies  
you mention to attend.

-cheers
-meadhbh

---

From: Gareth Nelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:20:28 +0000

I have a nice solution to this one, take OGP and build on it :)
Add the following:
1 bowl of transport mediums
1 cup of object position update messages
1 cup of geometrical definitions
Mix 2 cups until a clean set of messages is defined
Skim away SL limits, mix in and retain the basics (i.e web services,
agent/region domains split, HTTP capabilities over https:// URLs)
Bake for 50 minutes at 1337c and serve with a side portion of win

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Jon Watte <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Morgaine wrote:
>>
>> I can't understand why you continue to raise the spectre that we're here
>> to rubberstamp SL standards.  We aren't.  I'm not aware of anybody with that
>> agenda.
>>
>
> Because there are several people on this list who say "OpenSim and Second
> Life are already trying to do client interoperability; I think we should run
> with it and not worry about something bigger."
> ("Rezzing" of avatars) that are Second Life centric, while not specifying
> other things that would be necessary for an actually useful interoperable
> virtual world (like entity telemetry).
>
> arbitrary negotiated data, what would probably happen would be that OpenSim
> puts OpenSim data in that vessel, and IMVU puts IMVU data in that vessel,
> and both claim to support "OGP interoperability" but you can't do anything
> useful through that claim. I want to avoid that outcome.
>>
>> We are working in good faith towards your item 2), while noting that item
>> 2) means interop with "all" reasonable worlds, and that includes Linden
> What I mean by "single simulation" is what the user sees when connected to a
> specific, interoperating instance. I suppose the user could be connected to
> multiple of those, similar to opening multiple video streams in a media
> player, but then those generally have "nothing" to do with each other.
>
>

---

From: Gareth Nelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:22:01 +0000

Not your place to commit them, but whose place is it to at least contact them?

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Meadhbh Hamrick (Infinity)
<[email-masked]> wrote:
> yes. the purpose of the upcoming MMOX BoF session is to get people from a
> diverse collection of virtual worlds / MMOs in the same room at the same
> time to discuss:
>
> c. if we can't agree on the same problem domain, does it make sense to have
> multiple working groups?
>
> it is telling that the 74th IETF meeting is held during the same week and
> less than a mile away from this year's game developers conference, but it is
> not my place to commit representatives from the companies you mention to
> attend.
>
> -cheers
> -meadhbh
>

---

From: "Robert Gehorsam" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:23:44 -0800

Anyone who wants to, I think.  There are places like Virtual World News weekly where something could be posted too. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Gareth Nelson [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 2:22 AM
To: Meadhbh Hamrick (Infinity)
Cc: Robert Gehorsam; [email-masked]; Mystical Demina; Jon Watte
Subject: Re: [mmox] Learning from the past; focusing on the future

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Meadhbh Hamrick (Infinity) <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> I think part of the issue here with regard to the debate between 
>> broad and narrow interoperability is that, other than Jon 
>> representing Forterra's technical efforts, there are no other visibly 
>> participating technical representatives from any other virtual world 
>> technology providers or other relevant groups.  No one from Sun, 
>> Qwaq, Multiverse, HiPiHi, Activeworlds, any of the browser-based 
>> folks, Twinity, any of the game folks or kids worlds, Makena (the 
>> company that, contrary to some folks' assertions, is the company that 
>> makes and operates There.com), Proton Media, Icarus or its various 
>> partners, ECS, and so forth.   I've seen references to Qwaq but 
>> haven't seen Greg or anyone else from there participating here.   
>> There are probably two dozen companies that would be reasonable 
>> candidates for this discussion, not to mention companies like Adobe, 
>> Google, Intel, Samsung, Sony and, yes, even Microsoft, all of which 
>> might arguably have some interesting contributions to make.
>>
>> It may be that this lack of broad participation is creating -- fairly 
>> or unfairly -- the sense that the conversation will naturally drift 
>> towards an SL-OS orientation -- despite what I see as the best 
>> intentions of many people here -- simply because, other than 
>> Forterra, no one else is stepping up to the plate.   I can tell you 
>> that *that* is not something that Forterra wants to see, because it's 
>> inherent in our view of the evolution of the internet that 
>> interoperability between diverse virtual worlds is essential for all 
>> to succeed.  So the imbalance in this ongoing discussion creates a 
>> false dynamic of conflict when none is intended.  Without broad 
>> input, how can we achieve broad interoperability?
>>
>> that somehow not part of the policy?  Not being really familiar with 
>> the workings of these sorts of technical groups, I just don't know.
>>
>> Robert
>>
>> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf 
>> Of Jon Watte
>> Second Life are already trying to do client interoperability; I think 
>> we should run with it and not worry about something bigger."
>> specifying other things that would be necessary for an actually 
>> useful interoperable virtual world (like entity telemetry).
>>
>> Similarly, if OGP is specified as a mostly empty vessel that can 
>> contain arbitrary negotiated data, what would probably happen would 
>> be that OpenSim puts OpenSim data in that vessel, and IMVU puts IMVU 
>> data in that vessel, and both claim to support "OGP interoperability" 
>> but you can't do anything useful through that claim. I want to avoid 
>> that outcome.
>>>
>>> item 2) means interop with "all" reasonable worlds, and that 
>>> includes Linden worlds.  It's not either/or, it's both.  Please 
>>> grant us that, so that we can actually make headway.
>>>
>> What I mean by "single simulation" is what the user sees when 
>> connected to a specific, interoperating instance. I suppose the user 
>> could be connected to multiple of those, similar to opening multiple 
>> video streams in a media player, but then those generally have 
>> "nothing" to do with each other.
>>
>>

---

From: Gareth Nelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 07:25:15 +0000

Do we have a chronic case of the bystander problem? :)
I think such approaches may be best coming from a "big name", *cough*
LL and IBM *cough*

---

From: Jon Watte <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:50:31 -0800

> I have a nice solution to this one, take OGP and build on it :)

Once you change what the currently published specification of OGP is to 
what an interoperable exchange standard is, there won't be much left of 
the currently published proposal (version 4, is it?)
That's a little bit like saying "why don't we take COBOL, and remove 
everything we don't like, and add everything we know we'll need, and 
perhaps we'll end up with Java"?

Sincerely,

jw

---

From: Gareth Nelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:01:15 +0000

Ok, I should say "take some concepts from OGP", but basic idea remains the same

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 7:50 AM, Jon Watte <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Once you change what the currently published specification of OGP is to what
> an interoperable exchange standard is, there won't be much left of the
> currently published proposal (version 4, is it?)
> everything we don't like, and add everything we know we'll need, and perhaps
> we'll end up with Java"?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> jw
>
>