[vworld-tech] VWorld Axioms

Jim Purbrick Jpurbrick at climaxgroup.com
Tue Apr 13 06:18:10 PDT 2004


OK, given that the question "What's the Ultimate MMO Platform" resulted,
quite sensibly in lots of different answers depending on your definition of
an MMO, lets try starting from the other end.

What are the axioms of virtual worlds?

What are the base line assumptions we can make about all virtual worlds?
What are the problems we all face and what are the solutions to those
problems? Hopefully by looking at those questions we can discuss matters
which will be of use to every body on the list. Once we've nailed those
(yeah right) maybe we can talk about issues of more niche interest, like
which scripting language to use for a text MUD or how you make a p2p virtual
reality when no-one trusts each other.

So here's a straw man selection to start with:

1) A virtual world is a computer representation of a spatial environment.
2) Multiple participants observe and interact with the virtual world at the
same time.
3) Changes made to the virtual world by one participant can be observed by
other participants.
4) Arbitary sized virtual worlds are only possible if each participant is
only aware of part of the virtual world.

Even starting with this very small and high level selection, lots of
interesting issues can be discussed.

1a) How can the spatial environment be represented?
1b) What is the best representation?
3a) How can changes be commicated between participants?
3b) What is the best way to communicate between participants?
4a) How to participants express which bits of the world they are interested
in?
4b) How do participants discover what is in the world?

And so on...


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