Caleb Booker

Somebody Make Me A 3D Platform

Face it: there just isn’t a single virtual world platform that can do everything. They’re all either too difficult or too simplistic.

While we’ve considered developing our own, software development would take us out of our core competency of events in virtual worlds. Its not that we can’t, its that we really probably shouldn’t right now.

So I’m going to ask you, gentle reader, to go out there and make the 3D platform that the world deserves. I know you’re up to it!

Here’s the wishlist:

• Just focus on the engine and open the API up to developers.
• Crowd-source the extensions, not the core. Make some hard decisions and get it done this century, rather than arguing everything to death.
• Make it browser-based, and avoid plugin downloads at all costs! (beyond maybe the standard Flash or Java)
• Make logging in optional! People should be walking around your world immediately, with the option to log in at any time (to receive special access, abilities, customization, virtual goods, etc).
• Stick to free or open-source standards whenever possible. (Example: COLLADA!)
• Allow HTML and PHP calls to the web, and draw ALL data from the web.
• Allow avatars to hand files to each other. For example: I meet Ted, we’re talking, I say “hey Ted, here’s my card” and then I hand him a JPG or vCard or something from my hard drive… and then he gets it. It KILLS me that this function doesn’t exist anywhere!
• CONCURRENCY for crissakes… if you can only get 10 people in a room, don’t even bother. Just format your hard drive and get the hell off our Internets. We need 100 minimum, 1000 preferably, 10000 ideally. For so many reasons I can’t even begin to get into in a post like this one, I need to be able to fill this concert hall:
  

About the interface:

• Give the webmaster 100% control over the interface. Ask any webmaster: putting the content in is less than half of their job!
• Respect the standards. Billions of user-hours spent testing them have borne them out. Arrow keys, WASD, with E, R, and C for special functions like strafing or flying. SPACE to jump.
• Voice should just work. (See web.alive for a great example of this.)
• Put nothing on screen at all by default. Open the API up to allow individual content creators the ability to do this themselves if they want. This, for instance, is unacceptable:
  

CAUTION: red herrings (things people talk to death but aren’t super important… yet):

• Walking from one world to another (“interoperability”)… later. Crawl before you walk.
• Social networking. If you’ve left your platform open enough, a content creator will come up with it eventually.
• Facebook. Someone will probably adopt it into Facebook for you, but putting an app in Facebook is like putting web content in a frame: an awkward design choice that ultimately distracts users from the content.

Things you need to encourage independent developers to create:

• Voice – seriously, encourage competition between providers.
• What avatars actually look like
• Surface textures (on the back-end webmasters should be able to install developer plugins for video, HTML, custom PHP, etc…)
• Transfer protocols (ie: while avatars should immediately be able to hand files to each other, open the API enough to allow plugins for multiple protocols so that they can do FTP, Torrents, or direct HTTP/HTTPS requests)
• Animation protocols (ie: you’ll probably have a default way of doing this, but conventions here change constantly. Let the experts develop tools for you.
• 3D Object standards (You’ll need to pick something to support directly, but there’s just too much innovation out there to lock yourself down. Allow developers to create plugins for accepting other kinds of 3D content.)
• HOSTING. You are a software developer, NOT A WEB HOST. Let people find their own solutions here. Stay focused! Focus dammit!
  

Ok, go!