World Traversal Event

[chrislatorres]

I was thinking earlier today that a -world/metaverse- hopping event might be in the scope of the group, since a lot of people are representing these different worlds: vrlandio, janus, anarchy arcade.

This event would be outside of the normal meetup time and would not replace it.

[madjin]

This is a good event to serve as a means to field test and document the layers of friction of users moving between platforms and worlds. We can experience first hand and discuss the current state of traversal (disregarding menus like steamvr home button for now) and how things can bridge together better in future iterations.

Got some ideas to contribute to this:

• We all coordinate and communicate using discord during the event
• Someone in the group will be streaming which people can watch from youtube/twitch/hubs.

I think a good continuous path for us to take might look like:

1. Start in Anarchy Arcade
2. Launch a cabinet into Janusweb
3. Travel into an aframe/hubs world via portal
4. Open another webVR world from here
5. Launch into a native world like VRChat or HiFi

Goals:

1. Ask ourselves how avatars and objects can move between virtual worlds, why this is important, and how a more seamless metaverse might benefit the parties involved.

2. Gain insight from some of the limitations and useful design patterns different platforms have. Immediate feedback on the new user experience.

3. Scribe (me) can convert the conversations and archival footage from the event into a visual rich write-up that can be used to describe current points of friction and possibilities to streamline parts. This will be shared to the group knowledge base.

additional references:

• https://twitter.com/dmarcos/status/1112788960504213506 - WebXR immersive navigation proposal
• https://gist.github.com/madjin/ff580a7bbe6cc077cc87c3971801b99f - WIP cross-linking virtual worlds writeup

[avaer]

Can we broaden 1. to the idea of data portability in general?

Avatars and objects are strong manifestations, but that's a limited scope given the diverse ways different apps and businesses already use XR.

Some examples:

• Places
• Bookmarks
• Ledgers
• Credentials
• Credit cards
• Chat logs
• Graph relationships
• Media streams

[smsithlord]

The things I look for most in field trips to metaverse style apps are:

• Who created the content we are consuming? Users? Pros?
• How easy was it for them to do it?
• Were they happy with what they created?
• What kind of system powers the distribution of their creations when we join the server?

Also, I think we should start with simple low-entry barrier things, at least for the 1st field trip. Janus Web and Hifi sound good. 1 thing to install, and 1 thing that runs in the browser.

I have a great time in Sansar every time I launch it, so I do vote that up for consideration for a "something to install" one. It has some great user & pro made spaces.

[ps410]

Can we broaden 1. to the idea of data portability in general?

Avatars and objects are strong manifestations, but that's a limited scope given the diverse ways different apps and businesses already use XR.

Some examples:

• Places
• Bookmarks
• Ledgers
• Credentials
• Credit cards
• Chat logs
• Graph relationships
• Media streams

What about a public API that a user's current storage / social friends / assets provider would implement. A single group or organization like m3 would then handle the location of a user's provider's url (kinda like dns).

Whoever needs to access / modify a user's info would then lookup the user's provider url and use the api we provide.

So m3 would basically provide an api and a reference to a user's provider. When user switches provider then the org would have to verify using traditional methods like email, address, or whatever.

[madjin]

Found this in one of my search results while looking for something else:

Travelling Between Unrelated Virtual Worlds Published May 11, 2014: https://metaversing.com/2014/05/11/travelling-between-unrelated-virtual-worlds/

Next week is the 5th anniversary of that article, good day to do this event?

[chrislatorres]

Next week is the 5th anniversary of that article, good day to do this event?

@madjin I was thinking after May 21 (Quest/Rift S launch), since the next meet is May 16 that gives us a chance to discuss it in the meetup format.

[madjin]

Okay yeah I got pretty excited by the date of that article lol, even the chart from the article is close to the traversal paths in my post! Going to make an updated version of this before the next meet.

[JamesMcCrae]

Something after May 16! I am down.

[smsithlord]

Count me in on the field trip btw. And if we are allowed to bring guests, I have a couple friends that might want to tag along.

I like that idea ps410 mentioned about maybe some kind of central identity server.

When I see things like Janus's Metaverse Teleporter menu that shows live server listings for other platforms, it makes me wish there was a friends list that did this too - gave you actionable info about where your friends are in the metaverse.

Steam Friends used to serve this purpose, back when nearly everybody used Steam, but now that platforms are once again fracturing all into their own ecosystems, we are once again in need of a platform agnostic friends list consolidation solution. In the past, apps like Trillian would consolidate our friends lists. But times have changed since the old days, and an open web API seems better suited these days for mass compatibility.

[avaer]

And if we are allowed to bring guests, I have a couple friends that might want to tag along.

Sure, but let's keep in mind the goals of the trip -- everyone tagging along should be a contributor.

[chrislatorres]

List of potential worlds, don't necessarily need to go to all of these, trying to enumerate what is out there:

Web:

• Hubs
• Janus web or JanusVR on Steam
• cryptovoxels

Non-web:

• sansar
• VRChat
• Anarchy Arcade
• The Expanse
• High Fidelity
• Altspace
• Big Screen
• Rec Room
• Minecraft (if there is a good world traversal example) (full version is not free)

[KooIaIa]

I'd would like to create a small tour that covers 3 of the fundamental philosophies of Anyland. They are:

1. Everything is made in VR (and everyone is equal)
2. Everything has the potential to be alive and communicate
3. Everything is things

I could have it ready by this weekend. Anyland is a gray area between web and non-web because everything is online, it is a web browser, it has a javascript api, and everything is hosted as a JSON file.

[chrislatorres]

To narrow down the list from above, these seem the most relevant to visit. Also we have experts / devs from Hubs, Janus, Anyland, Anarchy Arcade in M3.

@madjin has a better sense of which "path" we can take for traversal between worlds, but I think we should start in Hubs to have a familiar meeting ground to go over the goals and then possibly recapping afterwards.

Does this Saturday May 25 at 6pm PST work for everyone?

List:

Web:

• Hubs
• Janus web or JanusVR on Steam
• cryptovoxels

Native:

• Anyland
• High Fidelity
• VRChat
• Anarchy Arcade

[madjin]

To narrow down the list from above, these seem the most relevant to visit. Also we have experts / devs from Hubs, Janus, Anyland, Anarchy Arcade in M3.

@madjin has a better sense of which "path" we can take for traversal between worlds, but I think we should start in Hubs to have a familiar meeting ground to go over the goals and then possibly recapping afterwards.

Does this Saturday May 25 at 6pm PST work for everyone?

List:

Web:

• Hubs
• Janus web or JanusVR on Steam
• cryptovoxels

Native:

• Anyland
• High Fidelity
• VRChat
• Anarchy Arcade

The list is great, Saturday 6pm PST works for me!

Guidelines

• Install Anyland, Anarchy Arcade, High Fidelity, and VRChat
• We'll first hop on Discord to coordinate through the overall agenda and as a backup communication channel
• No VR headsets this time - too many factors that can derail the overall agenda
• There will be 2 camera guys, @chrisplatorres for the youtube livestream and me screen-capturing

---

The Path

▶️ Anarchy Arcade
▶️ Hubs
▶️ JanusWeb
▶️ Cryptovoxels
▶️ Anyland
↩️ Cryptovoxels
▶️ JanusWeb
▶️ High Fidelity
▶️ VRChat
↩️ Anarchy Arcade

---

1. Hop into discord voice chat
2. Start Anarchy Arcade, meet in a public world, guided tour / lecture about shortcuts
3. Launch shortcuts to the Exokit Hubs world from AA, mute Discord audio and use Hubs for voice communication
4. Spawn a URL to JanusWeb, I will capture side-by-side browser video of us going between worlds so wait until I say go before clicking "Open Link"
5. Follow the path to the Cryptovoxels portal, I will again capture side by side browser video of the group so wait for signal to go
6. Walk into The Warp Zone and follow the group up the stairs
7. Warp to Anyland, learn more about it from @KooIaIa
8. Alt-F4 back to Cryptovoxels, next spot is across the street in the adjacent building
9. Wait for signal, then Open Link to JanusWeb
10. Follow the path to the High Fidelity launch portal, wait for camera guy to give the signal to fly into the portal
11. Someone will create a websurface with the VRChat website, click the Launch World button
12. We hang for a moment in VRChat until the lag becomes unbearable
13. Start closing every program but Discord, Hubs, and Anarchy Arcade
14. Summarize trip, answer some of the questions from thread, wrap-up event

---

Questions

What do we want to communicate between worlds?

Discuss data portability such as basic identity information and real-time positional information.

We can elaborate with more examples such as:

• Places
• Bookmarks
• Ledgers
• Credentials
• Credit cards
• Chat logs
• Graph relationships
• Media streams

What are these worlds made out of?

• Who created the content we are consuming? Users? Pros?
• How easy was it for them to do it?
• What tools were they likely using?
• Were they happy with what they created?
• What kind of system powers the distribution of their creations when we join the server?

---

Notes

"Instead of building one large Metaverse and splitting it into pieces, as has been done before, I looked at a different solution. How do we start with a bunch of unrelated pieces of software and combine them together to form a larger Metaverse? ... There are different authors, languages, graphics libraries, and more. If you wanted to create a way for players (avatars) to actually move between them, how could it be done? How would you move from JanusVR to Minecraft? How do you walk from Minecraft into VRChat?" - Traveling Between Unrelated Virtual Worlds

"While Iribe admits that a billion-person MMO is "going to take a bigger network than exists in the world today," he says Facebook's network makes a great place to start, and suggested it could be a Metaverse that joins disparate virtual worlds." - Oculus wants to build a billion person MMO with Facebook

[rzr]

About minecraft there is:

• https://classic.minecraft.net/

Is it OSS ?

An FLOSS alt minetest and it's not on the web:

• https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=16501

But I've found out this other project. but it looks like development stalled
http://voxeljs.com/

May I suggest that we keep listing FLOSS projects on wiki

Relate-to: M3-org/proposals#2