One project that some people will undoubtedly work on is building
virtual copies of real places (cf. Gelerntner, _Mirror Worlds_). For
this purpose, and for the advantage of familiarity, I recommend we begin
with Earth as a shared space and allow multiple coordinate systems,
such as lat/long/elev, geocentric Cartesian/polar/spherical, according
to usefulness to the given problem.
Of course coordinate transformations will be straightforward as long
as Cyberspace is kept connected, which it need not be.
This brings me to the Naming Issue. URLs are real mouthfuls today, and
will get worse. Places in Networked VR (hmmmm NVR, NeVeR, NVR-NVR land
:-) will need short names, which would be mapped to a set of
coordinates and a 'handle' by which to access the resource.
Also, to share a common coordinate system, we will need a system for
allocating space, just as we allocate IP addresses.
Not every construct in VR will need or want special internal geometry;
Freeman Craig's Pretty Good Virtual High School of Robotics and
Riflery might be built inside a model of Colossal Cave that pretends
to be infinitely extensible by adding rooms and links and only the
entrances would have standard coordinates. Equally, any alternate
local geometry can be accomodated by locating an appropriately
labelled door in standard space. It will seem, in the global map, as
if you had installed a wormhole end in a storefront at 4th and Main,
Anytown.
So, I think we can have it both ways. A simple framework for simple
constructs, and Exits for special cases.
-- fcp@nuance.com (Craig Presson) 72430.1422@compuserve.com
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