Well, there is are several metric tons of examples out there.. Hard to resist coming up with my own ideas though since this is such an interesting topic.
Maybe we don't have to have the most advanced open source 3d networking game engine out there as a protocol.
Maybe we can start by building off of Named Data Networking (NDN) http://named-data.net/doc/NDN-TLV/current/
Would be nice to have everything including content represented in Manchester OWL syntax but that's probably not realistic.
So perhaps use the NDN protocol with TLV encoding, NDN name format/URI scheme, order. Use the interest packets for subscribing to rooms in the metaverse. Then exchange NDN Data Packets with updates to object positions etc.
Maybe for data contents use something with YAML for a change from XML.
name/smith/john50/homeworld
base: org/sim
libs: dim/1, objs/1, phys/1
dimension: real
- terrain:
heightmap: maps/hills.png
- objects:
- house:
windows: 5
type: simple
bedrooms: 3
- avatar:
model: models/man.dae
name: name/smith/john50/me
pose: walk 2
position: [50, 50, 2]
velocity: [0.5, 1.0, 0.1]
owner: name/smith/john50
- portal:
world: name/wallace/liz10/homeworld
type: simplecircle
position: [123, 435, 123]
dimension: real
- webview:
name: John's Smart TV
url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
org/sim/objs/1
base: org/sim
dimension: real
- procedures:
room:
- for: [1, walls]
- makegeom: [cube, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
house:
- for: [b, 1, bedrooms]
- room:
walls: 4
- for: [b, 1, windows]
- cutgeom: [quad, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25, b, 0, 0]
name/smith/john50/update102
timestamp: xxxxxxxxxxxx
which: name/smith/john50/me
update:
operation: impulse
vector: [ 0.25, 1.0, 0.0 ]
startstate:
velocity: [ 0.5, 0.0, 0.0 ]
The idea with the "procedures:" thing is to take advantage of YAML's flexibility in order to create a language independent representation of an algorithm for doing simple procedural generation. It would be designed in such a way as to make it easy to generate code from the data tree in different languages like C, C++, Nim(rod), Java, Python, whatever. That would be compiled on the fly and loaded as a sort of plugin.
Then rather than doing simple state updates, it uses operational transformations like saying "at time A force B was applied to this object and its velocity before that was C".
So my idea uses an emerging standard (NDN) for efficiently distributing information and updates about the metaverse, an easy to read standard in YAML for describing the details, includes the concept of portals linking between worlds (you gotta have portals, they are one of the coolest things about the metaverse), includes the idea of embedded webviews (too much awesome stuff on the web to leave that out of the metaverse browser), a YAML-format for encoding algorithms that can be easily translated to common languages and compiled on the fly, and operational transformations for informing other clients about operations on the world state.