IEEE Internet Computing: VWRAP for Virtual Worlds interop

Skeletal pre-draft to a possible article

Remember the wiki motto, "Be Bold" ... but if none of this is any good, then supply a replacement. :-)

A brief history of virtual worlds

• <<<The only thing I can bring to this section is a small acquaintance since 1996 with what became ActiveWorlds, a decade of excessive online gaming in 3 major MMOs, and 5 years of Second Life + a little Opensim. I don't consider this a usable background for writing even a brief history of VWs. Morg>>>

The Second Life virtual world model

• <<<Intro to Linden Lab and the rise of SL>>>

• <<<Paragraph on the SL grid/simulator/client model>>>

• <<<Short paragraph on the SL data model>>>

Opensim and open source virtual worlds

• <<<libsecondlife and reverse engineering of SL protocols>>>

• <<<Founding of Opensim project and goals>>>

• <<<OSgrid and other Opensim-based grids>>>

• <<<Interop mechanisms available in Opensim>>>

• <<<User expectations for the SL/Opensym ecosystem>>>

Defining the VW interop problem space

• <<<LL+IBM, founding of the AWG, and scary numbers>>>

• <<<The OGP agent domain + region domain model>>>

• <<<One-sentence description of capabilities>>>

• <<<The OGP interop trial of Summer 2008>>>

• <<<Taking OGP to the IETF --- MMOX>>>

• <<<Narrowing the VW interop problem space: OGPX>>>

VWRAP: a services model of VW interop

• <<<Extending OGP to multiple VWs through policy-defining RDs == OGPX>>> (acceptable simplification?)

• <<<A successful OGPX BoF, and the foundation of VWRAP workgroup>>>

• <<<Brief description of expected VWRAP services>>>

• <<<High level overview of protocol entities>>>

VWRAP: the work ahead

• <<<Goals, rough timeline, and open invitation>>>