ideas-computer-metaverse

ideas pertaining to the metaverse (in the Snow Crash sense) if it is also a multiverse (like the OpenSim? grid) and augmented reality:

• gaming -- virtual worlds should be able to support MMOs within them. This means:
  • the protocol needs a way to say, 'when you're in this world, display these stats as an overlay in the upper left', for things like amount of life, amount of mana, map, etc; and it should have some control over how these are displayed, e.g. heart icons for life.
  • the protocol needs a way to tell the client accept non-standard actions from the user in a way that is easy for the user to do quickly; e.g. to say 'when you're in this world, assign a way for the user to aim their gun, and assign a button for firing the gun, and assign a button for jumping, and assign a button for Invisibility, and assign a button to quick-cast a spell'; (c) the protocol might want to support a way to shift into mini-games, e.g. "when i tell you to, switch into gun-sight-aiming mode, which means zoom and and apply a special overlay';
• neon outlining -- so you're walking down the street (in reality) and you turn on your augmented reality overlay in your glasses/contacts/cortical interface. Now other people appear, presumably appearing with indistinguishably real rendering quality (this is the future after all). But we need a way to distinguish them from real objects. So, outline their borders with a neon color. In addition, some people might simultaneously have their avatar in some online world be in the corresponding place as their real physical body is -- one might say that, unlike some people who are virtually there but not physically, and some who are physically there but not virtually, these people are simultaneously walking down the real street and walking down the virtual street. They get a neon outline too, perhaps a different color or thicker (or thinner) or more transparent or something.
• the objects in augmented reality can be placed in the same "multiverse" framework as pure VR locations such as OpenSim? and Second Life. That is, the real world can be addressed as if it were just one world among many in the multiverse, and coordinates to a location in the real world can be given in this fashion. This also implies that multiverse systems like OpenSim? should support the same geocoordinate systems used in specifying locations in the real world, at least as a special case.
• an idea complementary to the multiverse would be a relative DNS/URL/addressing system -- that is, rather than have a single global authority assign a name to each multiverse, each VR universe has its own URL/DNS system that lists the names of other known VR universes. A user by default queries the URL/DNS of the universe that they are currently in, but they can also establish a 'home' universe that is always used for relative URL/DNS lookups, and just like the 'hosts' file in GNU/Linux, they can also have personal names for certain universes that the take with them. See also
  • see also [Self-notes-computer-naming].
• an ordered set of name servers (ordered for priority of name resolution) could defines an augmented reality filter with relative naming
• two locations accessible to each other in a space with relative directions (like relative naming) are always connected by the composition law of relativity (my term), that is, if you go 'north' to get to place C from place B, and if you go 'east' to get to place B from place A, then, starting from place A, one direction list to get to place C must be 'east', 'north'. E.g. this tells you that if you know how to name place C relative to another place that you know how to name relative to a starting point, you can construct a direct name for place C from that starting point.
• universal algebra/category theory also talks about when you have different perspectives that talk about the same objects (or homomorphisms of)
• multimodal MMO VR, e.g. the same 'room' could be rendered as text, as a top-down 2d view with sprites, as a side-scrolling view, or as a 3-d view.
• HTML5 VR
• can we allow everyone to author without central servers?
  • viewpoint? forking wiki? mobilecontent (mb should rename that to 'movableContent' since 'mobile' means something else now)?
• in 2nd life, as you travel somewhere new, due to network latency and your own computer's slowness, things get rendered bit by bit, e.g. a tall building may first render the part right in front of your face, while leaving the high-up parts hazy, and then seem to grow taller by rendering the high up parts. Instead of looking at this as a bug, look at it as a feature; allow the partial rendering order and priority to be specified by object designers for stylistic effect