What needs standardization?
There are many technologies and protocols that could be standardized to achieve a fully interoperable 3d internet. However, it is often useful to start with a small core, and grow from there, using real implementations to guide the need.
Here is a list to get started. This list includes some items that may not need standardization, and also may miss some things that are needed. Please add your comments and suggestions in comments to this thread.
- Avatar Appearance
- How the user looks in the virtual world. Bringing your persona with you is important for you to feel like you're actually present with other people. However, different systems may have different rendering capabilities.
- Avatar Behavior
- How the avatar walks, talks, and reacts to stimuli.
- Interaction
- How can objects with physical effects in the world be used cross-world? Anything from a laser pointer, to a vehicle, would fit here. Also, how the avatar can interact with other avatars.
- Local Communications
- Text and voice chat between avatars in the same vincinity.
- Distant Communications
- Instant Messages, Radios, Telephones, ... Perhaps within a given world, or perhaps across them.
- Terrain and Environment
- The world that the interaction happens in. Buildings, trees, ground, rooms. Daylight/night-time. Weather.
- Applications
- Should applications like language training, online meetings or emergency preparedness be portable between worlds?
- Possessions
- Items that the avatar can take out of inventory and place in the virtual world.
- Commerce
- How items are bought and sold in the virtual world.
- Trust
- How a given virtual world can trust another world on data that affects itself. What kinds of data should be left to each virtual world to manage as its own? How are users identified across hosts, if at all?
Another question to ponder: How much of the standards need to be aimed at optimizing runtime, versus re-using existing interoperability methods?