VWRAP Charter

Working Group Name:

  Virtual Worlds Region Agent Protocol (VWRAP)

Chairs:

  TBD

Area and Area Directors:

  Applications Area

  Lisa Dusseault <lisa.dusseault@gmail.com>

  Alexey Melnikov <alexey.melnikov@isode.com>

Responsible Area Director:

  TBD

Mailing List:

  ogpx@ietf.org   http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ogpx

Description of Working Group:

The working group will define the Virtual Worlds Region Agent Protocol (VWRAP) for collaborative 3-dimensional virtual  environment. The protocol permits users to interact as digital representations called "avatars". Avatars exist in at most one location within a shared virtual space. Conforming  client  applications use  the protocol  to manipulate and  move the  user's avatar, create  virtual objects, interact  with other users  and their surroundings, consume and create media and information from sources inside and outside their simulated environment.

Adjacent points  in virtual spaces accessible by  this protocol may be   explicitly   partitioned  into   "regions"   to  facilitate   the computational  and communication load  balancing required  to simulate the virtual  environment. Such virtual  environments may consist  of regions administered  by distinct organizations. Regions provide the service endpoints for interacting with the inhabitants and objects they contain. Regions uniquely represent their partition of the virtual space (that is, they are not a "sharding" mechanism). The state of  a virtual  world is independent  of the  client applications that access it and may persist between user sessions.

Regions and  other services implemented according to  the specifications may be deployed by separate  organizations with varying policies and trust domains.  The VWRAP  protocol will  provide the  mechanisms  for these virtual world  services to interoperate, when permitted  by policy and shared trust  domains. To support the exegesis  of the specifications, the group  may define a  non-exhaustive set of  non-normative policies protocol participants may enforce.

Foundational components of the protocol include the publication of:

• an abstract type system, suitable for describing the application protocol in an implementation neutral manner,
• a security model describing trust relationships between participating entities,
• guidelines for the use of existing authentication and confidentiality mechanisms,
• an application-layer protocol for establishing  the user's avatar in a region,
• an application-layer protocol for changing an avatar's position, including moving between regions, 
• format descriptions for objects and avatars, and
• an   application-layer  protocol for identifying entities, and requesting information about them.

The protocol defined by this  group will carry information about the virtual environment, its contents and its inhabitants. It is an application layer protocol,  independent of transport, based partially on these previously published internet drafts:

• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hamrick-ogp-intro
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hamrick-llsd
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hamrick-ogp-auth
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hamrick-ogp-launch
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-lentczner-ogp-base
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-levine-ogp-clientcap
• http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-levine-ogp-layering

The protocol should describe interaction semantics independent of  transport, leveraging existing standards where practical. It  should define interoperability  expectations for server to server interactions as well as client-server interactions. Though the protocol is independent of transport, early  interoperability trials used HTTP(S) for non-real-time messages. The working group will define specific  features that must be replicated  in other transports and  will  define  the use  of  HTTP(S)  as  a transport  of  protocol messages.

Goals and Milestones:

• October  2009 "Introduction and Goals" to the IESG as an Informational RFC
• October 2009 "Abstract Type System for the Transmission of Dynamic Structured Data" to the IESG as Proposed Standard
• October 2010 "Foundational Concepts and Transport Expectations" to the IESG as Proposed Standard
• February 2010 "Guidelines for  Host Authentication" to the IESG as an Informational RFC
• February  2010 "Service Establishment"  to the  IESG as Proposed Standard
• February 2010 "Client Application Launch Message" to the IESG as an Informational RFC
• February 2010 "Simulation Presence Establishment" to the IESG as Proposed Standard
• June  2010 "Primitive Object  Format" to the IESG as Proposed Standard
• June 2010 "Digital Asset Access" to the IESG as Proposed Standard
• June 2010 "Entity Identifiers" to the IESG as Proposed standard