Interoperability; was: [sldev] Call for requirements: ISO MPEG-V ...

[Ben Francis]

Mike Monkowski wrote:
> Why?  What advantage is there to sharing builds or avatar meshes 
> across different platforms?  Are they worth the effort?

My answer is a resounding yes! The sharing of assets between different 
3D worlds is a crucial part of my personal vision of a 3D web. I should 
add the disclaimer here that I enter this discussion from a background 
in web technology rather than gaming engines and have quite different 
views of some architectural points than is perhaps the norm on this list.

I can not see how inter-operable 3D worlds can even consider not having 
avatars which can travel between worlds and objects which the avatar can 
take with them. Yes, new security models are necessary (you don't want 
spammers turning up to your peaceful scene brandishing huge billboards), 
but that is just one of the challenges ahead.

The idea of a consistent avatar in principle is similar to the images 
people can associate with their name in a discussion forum on the web.

Interoperability for me would be anyone being able to create a 3D scene 
in the same way that anyone can create a web page, anyone being able to 
run a chat server in the same way that anyone can run a Jabber server or 
IRC server. It would be wandering between 3D scenes in the same way that 
people browse the web.

In terms of business models - why not 3D representations of online 
stores, advertising in virtual spaces... in short the same business 
models that surround the web. But really I'm not sure that business 
models have a great deal to do with creating technology standards. The 
W3C doesn't tell you how to make money on the web, it tells you how to 
make a standards compliant web site that everyone can use and will work 
with the rest of the web. I think any attempt at building business 
values into technical standards will result in a collection of walled 
gardens with a frustratingly inconsistent user experience, and never 
reach the full commercial potential that we've seen with the World Wide Web.

Sticking with my 3D Web example, an avatar is just an X3D resource which 
can be served from a web server and included into a X3D scene in the 
same way that an HTML resource can be embedded in an iframe in a web page.

That's my point of view, from a web perspective, of interoperability.

-- 
Ben Francis
http://tola.me.uk