John Hurliman

(This is a repost of my blog entry at http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/02/18/approaching-virtual-world-interoperability/)

Several new developments are brewing in the metaverse. The Massive Multiplayer Online Experiences IETF group has started to form, co-chaired by Linden Lab and IBM. Linden Lab has started publishing standards drafts for virtual world interoperability. OpenSim has started exploring linking grids together with HyperGrid. The topic of virtual world interoperability is at the forefront of many people’s minds. Due in part to the success of the web model (everyone can run their own website), individuals and businesses are waiting for the opportunity to run their own virtual world simulation, content development or storage business, spatial search engines, or maybe a mashup service that twitters virtual world activity. But before this can happen, the barriers need to be broken down between the walled garden virtual worlds of today and allow virtual concepts (identity, persistence, content) to move between worlds. How we get there is the topic of a heated debate.

Apologies to those who have been following dead links to code or posts on my website for the last week and a half. My website was previously hosted at http://www.atarack.com, until they suddenly disappeared off the web. I’m in the process of recovering things from backups and Google caches; here’s to hoping three years of [...]