Recapping the Interoperability thing

Back in October ... IBM had organized a group set standards for virtual worlds—or, as some are viewing it, the creation of the 3D Internet. So Who Was There? Reports are putting the attendee list at around 60 representatives from 30 companies or organizations while others have limited the group to 23 organizations. IBM is keeping a tight lid on who exactly was there, though an early report included a few groups. So far, though, 19 companies have been confirmed as having representatives at the meeting: AutoDesk, Samsung, HiPiHi, Anshe Chung Studios, Sun, Transmutable, Areae, Forterra, Mindark, IBM, Cisco, Google, Linden Lab, Sony, Multiverse, Intel, Microsoft, Motorola, and Philips. Some of these companies have already made significant and conspicuous investments in the virtual world space. Some have made smaller plays through other groups. And some, it seems, are getting involved for the first time. "It was an interesting meeting," said Multiverse Co-founder and CTO Rafhael Cedeno. "There were people from all sorts of businesses and backgrounds. So in the beginning there was a lot of time spent to get in sync with what everyone’s viewpoints on what a virtual world actually is, what an avatar is, and what it even means to be interoperable. What does it mean to have your inventory carried over? What does it mean for what your avatar can do in that world? Do you even need an avatar, and how does that relate to you as a person?" Some spectators and attendees have expressed frustration about the wide range of experience among attendees and presenters and the lack thereof from some. One notable group missing from the roster, as has been acknowledged by the key players, is a user group. Most parties offer their own tools or platforms to build on, but only Anshe Chung Studios comes from a content developer background. While the lack of a specific user group at the meeting has led to some peanut gallery mutterings, Cedeno says the users are still the focus. It's problematic, though, to figure out what that means. "If you’re coming from just one platform like Second Life and what people are doing there, it’s quite different from what people are doing in World of Warcraft," he explained. "Understanding users is very important. We find that there are a lot of people who have experience in one platform and then can easily say, ‘That’s what all users in virtual worlds want.’ The great thing about what we do is that we get to see people creating business applications, first-person shooter games, and social networking games. Those people are wildly different."

It's that diversity that makes interoperability a necessity for those involved. As platform developers carve out niches for themselves around specific uses, it becomes less and less likely that one world can do everything a user needs. "Even within a single entity, it's not one world fits one," said Michael Rowe, 3D Internet Champion, 3D Internet and Virtual Worlds, IBM Research. "You've got to look at interoperability for different goals. If I make an investment in content, I don't want to make content unique in only one place. If I make an investment, I want to make sure it has a lifespan beyond just this platform that may have a lifespan of two years or just nine months. That's when you start looking at the interverse, the intraverse, and the extraverse." That variety, in turn, led to the pastiche approach to forming the community. "It's important to get people of different backgrounds," said Rowe. "If we had just brought together a bunch of people who had drunk the Kool-Aid, all we'd get is more Kool-Aid. We need people to disagree." And Disagree They Have
Raph Koster, who also attended the meeting, blogged that standards were less important than political issues. Others, like Multiverse Co-founder, Executive Producer and Marketing Director Corey Bridges, who was not in attendance, think developers should focus on existing standards instead of creating new ones.
"What we saw this week was the example of the committee way, which is valid, but there are other standards: Java Script, Python, COLLADA, all of these are open standards that Multiverse already supports," said Bridges. "They are standards that real companies already support—that any real platform must support, otherwise I’d say their not serious about being a platform. If you’re going to force people to learn some dead-end scripting language or some crippled in-world tool, that’s not a real platform. If you acknowledge and leverage the existing ecosystem of tools and knowledge, then you’re really building something that can last." Others, like Cisco's Christian Renaud, see this as just a beginning step. "To avoid any misconceptions, this was a first meeting of interested parties in this space to discuss what could be done," he blogged. "As with any meeting, there were people missing that would have contributed to the conversation, however, (to paraphrase Lao-Tzu) A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Some opposition to change is inevitable, even among the early adopter crowd that makes up the virtual worlds community. However, it's particularly strong from some virtual worlds developers. Millions of Us CEO Reuben Steiger has compared the problem to the Las Vegas monorail. It was meant to connect all the casinos in Sin City, large and small, to give the gambler more choice, but the big, popular casinos had no interest in making it easy for visitors to move around. "Anytime you start looking at trying to bring openness and standards into an existing space—right, you have the walled gardens," explained Rowe. "It is incumbent on me if I own the garden to keep you in my garden. I control the garden. I control the economy. I control the world. We all want to control the world. But what we have to show and are hearing across companies and consumers is that that's not enough. The 'Net is already open, and I can move seamlessly. I don't have to worry if the servers hosting eBay and Amazon are different. The market is going to drive this. It has to."

And for worlds devoted to specific ideas, it means not just giving up users, but potentially giving up control. "You do take a hit to make [interoperability] happen," explained Cedeno. "That’s my opinion. When you develop something that has a very specific purpose and get to make all the decisions, it’s a little bit easier. But [interoperability is] important to us in the long run because other tools will be able to integrate, and I think that will move closer and closer to the consumer."
Or, as Linda Ban, IBM Research's Executive for Client and Program Strategy, Digital Convergence, puts it, "Change is coming." The question then, is how. Multiverse has always focused on providing interoperability between its worlds. Metaplace from Areae is based on providing a similar network. And there are more than a few open source virtual world developers in the field. But each has its own set of goals.
"There are some topics we discuss that are a lot more basic and make more sense," explained Cedeno, who begins Multiverse's interoperability approach from the basic tech side of connecting the server to the client. "We’re very interested in having some kind of rendering interoperability so you can use different clients for a platform or use different servers to talk to the client. And the other thing is avatars. I think it’s a clear need that you have some sort of system to describe your avatar and move it from world to world. That said, I don’t think it’s a forgone conclusion that every world should allow that." Regardless, everyone involved agreed to continue talks. All the parties present agreed that at least that much was important to the industry. "The optimistic side is that we drive out the standards to the level that you see on the 'Net" said Rowe. "The challenge there is the 'Net came about because there were standards, and now we're taking a lot of walled gardens and trying to help connect those standards that don't exist. The pessimistic is that doesn't happen. It's a flash. In five years, no one cares. I don't think that happens, though."... In the meantime, discussion is taking place at Interopworld.org, a website set up by Forterra CEO Dave Rolston some time ago in anticipation of an event like this. Forterra President Robert Gehorsam stressed, though, that this isn't a Forterra project or branded site and that the website was not necessarily a permanent home. Forterra is, however, took a leading stance by posting the first possible standard for discussion, offering a Paged Terrain Format specification draft shortly after the meeting. "Certainly we're going to make a fairly immediate contribution with the terrain format stuff, and we'll continue to be a part of the conversation," said Gerhorsam. "A part of our view is that the question for interoperability becomes much more important on the enterprise side of things. In entertainment, you almost want a walled garden. That's how you achieve your effect. So it's certainly in our best interest to make this happen." Forterra has several military and intelligence in the works that rely in part on creating virtual worlds that comply to training standards. Likewise, Linden Lab has joined with IBM in officially throwing its weight behind open standards. And while IBM won't put a limit on its commitment or a number on the budget it's operating on to investigate standards, the players involved make it out to be a serious commitment. "The fact that IBM has created an organization and staffed it in dedicated folks to work on this space, I think, speaks volumes," said Ban. "Within IBM there are a very small number of activities that get funded to go out and look at emergent technologies. The fact that IBM committed resources, committed people, and committed time, speaks volumes. The fact that a Fortune 10 company is going to build that community, makes it look pretty promising."