2011 Metaverse Wishlist

[Alan]

The New Year is nearly upon us, which of course means it's time to
start thinking ahead. What do you hope to see happen in 2011 in the
Metaverse?

[Jason Shipley]

Speaking from the viewpoint of a metaverse developer and content
creator, these are 3 wishes for the genie in the sculpty prim bottle:

1) a solid, standardized hypergrid interface that every grid can run and
eliminate the current "can't get there from here" confusion. The
OpenSim devs are doing a great job already and I realize there are all
sorts of variables to deal with. I just don't want to run 3 different
standalones in order to grid hop at will if I don't have to. Keep in
mind that this should logically include further work on the existing
(and promising) asset permission enforcement protocols.

2) a strong online marketplace for quality goods. Freebies are great
(it's called 'Open'Sim for a reason) but having to bite the bullet and
agree on the fact that there will eventually need to be some sort of
economy to attract full-time content developers (like my better half is
in SL) is something to be discussed seriously. It would be nice to have
at least one well designed repository for virtual goods that can be used
across multiple grids.

3) a good web-based viewer. A REALLY good one. One that not only
interfaces with OpenSim environments, but some of the other lateral
platforms as well. I realize this is primarily an OpenSim flavored
list, but as I tinker with OpenCobalt, Kataspace and realXtend I see
that there are inevitably going to be a handful of viable metaverse
development environments to choose from. It may not be feasible to link
them by hypergrid, but making them all web accessible seems like a plan.

There are other obvious bells and whistles like integrated mesh object
and media-on-prim support, but those seem well on their way and are
mostly coding issues. I'm looking forward to hear what others are
hoping for. Happy new year to all :)

Jason (.core)