broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) (09/15/90)
In article <7460@milton.u.washington.edu> lishka@uwslh.slh.wisc.edu (a.k.a. Chri ) writes: > * Virtual world servers. I am thinking of building a world > "daemon", with software "ports" that allow an outside agent > (either a real user or some sort of software agent) to > experience and interact with the world. Note that different > types of ports (for different virtual senses) are desired here > as well (i.e. a user could experience the world through three > ports: "sight", "sound", and "touch", or even others such as > "smell" and "infrared sight"). The protocol ideas I posted in a previous article mesh quite nicely with this concept; they are the protcol that would be spoken over the software "ports" you describe. Real-world example, circa a few years from now: I sit down at my computer at home, slip on a PowerGlove derivative and plug it into my serial port. I also don a pair of eyephones and a pair of earphones, both plugged into a board in my computer (which does the hard work of rendering). This headpiece also has a microphone. My computer opens an ISDN connection to your virtual world server. Actually, two connections; one B-channel for audio and one for data, each bidirectional. The audio channel uses existing data compression to fit two 15 khz channels (for stereo) into one 64kbit data stream from the host; my own outgoing audio is mono, and is mixed (in software) with any other sounds my computer has stored in digital form that might emanate from my virtual persona. (If I want to enter a room with a choir of angelic voices, why not?) The data channel uses something like the protocol we were discussing some articles back to relay information about me and mine to a port on your virtual room server, and to accept (and, using the special board, display) information about you and yours and the other occupants of the room from you. Your server does the appropriate summing of everyone's audio and sends it to me as a stereo signal. A single board that has the rendering hardware, the eyephone/earphone/micro- phone connection and a standard ISDN interface should be off-the-shelf hardware in a few years. In fact, why not throw in a small processor, case and power supply and sell is as a self-contained unit? No computer-literacy needed... it's the next Nintendo. You put on the headgear and glove, plug it into your ISDN jack, and off you go... The key here (as has been mentioned in previous articles) is a standard protocol, simple and extensible and public domain. That way free competition and market forces will keep the price down and make the box available to everybody (and lead to better, more powerful boxes). -- Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept Mail: broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu OR broehl@watserv1.UWaterloo.ca BangPath: {allegra,decvax,utzoo,clyde}!watmath!watserv1!broehl Voice: (519) 885-1211 x 2607 [work]