The issue of interoperability between virtual worlds has been a strange one for a long time. It seems like everyone wants it, everyone agrees we need ‘web-like’ standards of data exchange between worlds, but no one seems to interested in building it. If anyone, IBM seems to have the best papers to build VRML’s successor, having a consistent presence int he back-end of a number of virtual world initiatives, but their recent move to private virtual worlds on the Second Life platform made them seemingly step away from the standardization of data. However, the same institution behind the MPEG initiative has recently announced a new project, the open standards for Virtual worlds:
The ‘Information exchange with Virtual Worlds’ [1] project intends to provide a standardized global framework and associated interfaces, intermediate formats definitions and the like, to enable the interoperability between virtual worlds (as for example Active Worlds, Second Life, IMVU, Google Earth, Virtual Earth and many others) and between virtual worlds and the real world (sensors, actuators, vision and rendering, robotics (e.g. for revalidation), (support for) independent living, social and welfare systems, banking, insurance, travel, real estate, rights management and many others).
The ‘V-MPEG’ standards are to become a set of rules and code, which allows 3D objects, the interfaces between virtual worlds, and lastly the interfaces between the real and virtual world to display the same data, in the same way. Just like you can load web pages in Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Safari, virtual world data should be viewable in a number of different clients (Active Worlds, Google Earth, or Second Life):
The first part (Part1) will describe an overall architecture that can be instantiated for all the foreseeable combinations of virtual worlds and real world deployment. This architecture will be derived from the requirements defined by a set of use cases (a number of these use cases are presented in the appendix of this document) that will be chosen to cover the entire foreseeable virtual world / real world combination application domains (see the illustration below for an example of the foreseen architecture and related interfaces for interoperability). The architecture positions all the related technologies, endorsed technologies and the MPEG technologies defined in this project. (This includes the interfaces between virtual worlds (Part2) and the interfaces between virtual worlds and the physical world (Part3)).
Ofcourse the actual development of such standards would be an exciting step forwar. Removing the limits imposed by specific worlds and clients and therefor the decentralization of content is one of the primary conditions for the 3D web to go anywhere. However, the initiave fails to mention it’s solutons to problems not nessecarily restricted by pure code, such as the restrictions on virtual items to give them value (articifical scarcity). Read the entire report here (PDF alert!).
Via dusanwriter.com
Posted on: May 26, 2008 | Share on:
Join the conversaton!
You must be logged in to post a comment.
nelly on 
ciera on
Jon W
said on May 27th
There has been a lot of talk about virtual world interoperability in the last year, and a number of companies got together to talk about it in a virtual world interoperability forum (see http://vwinterop.wikidot.com). Unfortunately, the effort seems bogged down in legalities (how to treat IP of contributors, etc).
I’ll check out the V-MPEG effort, but it’s my experience that if the standard isn’t based on solving real current needs for real virtual world providers and customers, it will be stillborn. At Forterra, we receive requests from customers to integrate virtual world systems with other systems (virtual and real), which I think is where the real action will be. Hook up virtual world A to virtual world B, and let users of world A also visit world B and vice versa. It can be done with incremental effort from where we already are, so it’s looking very attractive, compared to efforts that purport to re-define the very basics, like client protocols or graphics.
Rick van der Wal
said on May 27th
Thank you for commenting Jon, and thanks for the link.
I agree and I am yet to be convinced by who’d have a real interest in developing these ‘one size fits all’ standards, and actively financing them without a good definition of the goal yet. I’m not saying there isn’t a goal or a commercial interest, but I’ve yet to see it be properly defined by any of these ’standard developers’, thinking only in terms of technical and user interoperability and disregarding the commercial applications and implications.