 Welcome back everyone to OSCC 16. This is the 10 to 1030 session. As a reminder to all of our in-world and web audience, you can view the full schedule at conference.opensimulator.org and tweet your questions or comments at open sim cc or with the hashtag hashtag OSCC 16. This session we're happy to introduce a topic called future of the metaverse blueprints for the evolution of virtual worlds. And this presentation focuses on the future advancements and key innovations which can be seen as paramount for the development of virtual worlds going forward based on current and arising developments in the industry. Our speaker today is Will Burns. He is currently the vice president of IEEE virtual world standards group and works at synthetic environment SME. Will has over 20 years of experience within marketing, design, research, and implementation for all areas of synthetic immersive environments. Further, Will has a particular interest in binaural audio, virtual environment, sociology, trend forecasting, and immersion as well as helped define the modern metaverse. So I'm going to hand the mic over to Will so we can hear what our future entails. Hey, thank you very much. Quick correction now. I'm the only the vice chair of the IEEE virtual world standard group. I wish I was the president of it all, but or the vice president. So first of all, I'd like to welcome everyone to my presentation today, the evolution of virtual worlds. This presentation is based off a longer version I did for both community virtual library and nonprofit commas in Second Life. Of course, due to time constraints, I'll be offering the highly summarized version, which means I only have time to highlight some of the trends I think will change the paradigm of virtual worlds. So by no means is this a comprehensive presentation and I'll be missing quite a lot, but if you're interested in a more in-depth outlook or have questions and discussion, I'll be available at the presentation booth in expo three. So let's begin. There's a lot to be said concerning the evolution of virtual worlds and what it means to have attained that ever mythical metaverse with a capital M. Over the past 20 years or more, I'm continually asked what the future holds. And while it may be true that my ability to predict these trends is better than average, even a seemingly simple question such as this gives me a pause. Because let's face it, the answer isn't always quite so straightforward. There are a lot of facets to explore when it comes to identifying these key traits and to what the answers given are often not something that can be neatly tied up within a mere 20 minutes of presentation. So what we can do, however, is touch on some of these mechanics today and offer a bit of insight as to how they work and why they would be beneficial to the future of virtual worlds. So let's begin. Let's start with resource management. In the bigger picture, it's the management of resources in a virtual world system that creates an underlying basis for how it should be designed from the lowest level upward. Now, when I speak about resource management, I'm blurring the lines between in-world resources and real-world resources inclusive. In my opinion, I have been seeing quite a lot of survival aspects being added to these open-ended virtual worlds, whether they're merely an MMO or a full-out sandbox virtual universe. The lines between these differentiations are becoming muddled at best. This lack of foresight, though, left a majority of players. When No Man's Sky first launched, it did so with a lot of hype concerning their procedurally generated universe, touting upwards of 18 billion billion planets. The reality of this hit home quickly as players found that there was little to do in a vast universe other than roam around and collect resources. So the lack of foresight left a majority of players asking the obvious question. Now what? In effect, we saw a vast procedurally generated virtual universe with resource collection and management, but which had neglected to give the players or inhabitants one thing that they really needed in order to participate in a compelling experience, which is, of course, purpose. Millions of players were rightfully outraged by the lackluster offering, many pointing out the fact that while there are 18 billion billion possible planets to explore, there's little reason to actually explore them or stay there once found. However, with the recent Foundation update from Hello Games, what we saw was the ability to build bases and stick around the procedurally generated planets. Furthermore, they also introduced a mechanic which allows players to manage trade routes in an intergalactic manner. So to me, this is a game that's inching from one side of the spectrum back toward the middle ground that we call a metaverse. There is, of course, the open-ended virtual world systems that begin on this premise, building and work their way to the middle from the opposite end of the spectrum. OpenSim is a perfect example of this. And while neither side of the equation would actually constitute a metaverse, both contained components which would greatly advance the collective journey to that end goal. So if anything, I would say that games such as No Man's Sky and Dual Universe are actually a lot closer to realizing a full-scale metaverse than our tried and true OpenSim and Second Life derivatives. So with the inclusion of a centralized marketplace to allow user-generated goods and services to be included, No Man's Sky and Dual Universe would probably make OpenSimulator and Second Life all bit irrelevant. As developers, we therefore must stop to ask ourselves, what makes these new systems more capable and compelling than our current iterations of OpenSim or maybe Second Life? And then take the time to address those advancements in a manner which increases the value added proposition to the end-users. So let's take a bit to gloss over some of the mechanics and design choices and see how something like OpenSim could maybe address them. I'll begin with ease of use. It's always a low-hanging fruit. With any virtual world, the devil's always in the details. As we've seen here in the chat today, we're discussing a lot of details on the backend. For the baseline, let's begin by focusing on initial criteria that the end-user will encounter when entering your virtual environment for the first time, or by migrating from another similar system. What are the barriers to entry for first-time users in a virtual world? Of course, this brings us to communication. We like to think of communication as how we interact with each other in a virtual environment, but more compelling are the methods by which the environment itself is able to successfully communicate the solutions to end-users searching for answers. When we first log into OpenSim, the first-time user will more than likely on their own, and more common items which they would most likely look for simply are not present in any meaningful manner to them. We can call this a barrier to entry, which is exorbitantly prohibitive in nature. By allowing these completely avoidable negative end-user experiences to continue without recourse, we inherently create a situation whereby the end-user, all that gives up in frustration, never to return, and it's only the most die-hard users who stick with the platform for the long haul. As it's said in the world of web design, you might have all 30 seconds to get the attention of the end-user and keep it, and if you aren't engaging them in a meaningful manner from the get-go in a virtual world, then you're frustrating them into leaving. Typical things which an end-user immediately would want access to are not readily apparent or available in a manner which removes those barriers to entry. In game development world, we could refer to these nuances as progression systems, and they're sorely ignored in open-ended sandbox virtual worlds like OpenSim. While in MMO, progression systems usually refer to leveling up a character or requiring new gear for advancement, and a virtual world like Second Life for OpenSim were applying it to a similar means of progression in order to chart the path of engagement. If the end-user isn't able to foresee a long-term strategy in their interaction with the virtual world, then they are inherently thinking about it all in terms of short-term focus. And while in open-ended sandbox virtual environments, aren't as straightforward as the latest MMO, and they are often in the midst of an identity crisis, that is, you know, is this a game or a virtual world? We can take a lot from the use of progression systems and our design choices. When a first-time user logs into the open metaverse, hypothetically, what are the first things they're going to want and or need to get their avatar up and running in a satisfactory manner? To answer simply, a new user is going to want the ability to customize your character in order to create an emotional bond with their online persona. Because if you allow somebody to create that emotional bond as early as possible, then you drastically increase their interest in participating further. Most places that I've logged into starting out in OpenSim offer little to no quality options in these very basic design choices. So when frustrated due to lack of finding anything, the average new user is going to instinctively seek out a method by which to locate those options, which is why the second step in the hierarchy is that dude probably more than likely attempt to use a search function to look for those things. And I'm sure as we all know here in this room, the OpenSim search function may be all but broken, yielding little to no tangible results in an easy-to-use manner. Let's talk about resource management methods for a moment. Continuing with the underlying fundamentals, one of the trends I see in MMO and virtual world is the inclusion of resource-based economic systems to balance the gameplay with purpose. In some manner we see a cool-down period employed between actions or some method of managing resources or energy for the player involved. Minecraft comes to mind. For this, as well as both No Man's Sky and Outcoming Dual Universe MMO. In all these examples, I take it takes resources in world to create items as well as build and to operate machinery of sorts. I would contend that this is an excellent foundational inclusion for a metaverse system, and that by simply incorporating these survival type mechanics from the beginning, we immediately have groundwork laid for organic growth and purpose from the population in a very long-term sort of fashion. But on a broader spectrum, I see a resource management system built into projects such as high fidelity, where the resources we talk about aren't in world gamification examples, but instead are measured in compute cycles and maybe cache A sharing. By merely logging into the virtual world, your computer may be generating resources in the form of compute cycles needed for the actual virtual world system as a whole. And this is something that I'd outlined as a future application in a metaverse when I wrote the original paper with Dr. Gilbert and Dr. Gianiccio. So there are, of course, other reasons that we want to incorporate this and their types of resource management in world. So let's touch on that real quick. Start with currency limitations. So in the paper, I did outline a basic premise defining our inherent need to overcome the current limitations of concurrency in a virtual world. With our current approach of one server for one region, we have found that this approach hits the ceiling quickly. In Moses, I've heard that 150 concurrent clients could be connected in tests and maybe upwards of stress tests in the thousands, so long as each client was stripped to absolutely nothing in the process. There's got to be a better way to accomplish this. Let's be honest here. And luckily, a solution has arisen in the form of single shard server clusters, like you see here on the screen. This is dual universe, by the way. So in the dual universe model and in high fidelity respectively, the processing of all this information is entirely the domain of a single machine per region. The amount of resources one contributes to the main system is a direct indication of what the end user is capable of dealing into what scale. In dual universe, the burden of computation is unloaded from the individuals and onto a single shard cloud cluster, which is running software that can effectively micromanage entire planets, thousands of players in a small area and scale up as needed. In high fidelity, they've taken a more holistic approach by utilizing every connected machine to the virtual world as a wimpy compute cluster in a decentralized fashion in such a manner that every client is contributing compute resources in some way. At this point, the whole was now greater than the sum of its parts, so to speak. Another higher profile system which will likely use the same methodology is the upcoming Nintendo switch console. While each individual console may on its own be myopic and ability by connecting them all to a compute cluster back end, they each become respectively more powerful than the base hardware. Not to be outdone, even Microsoft is looking to incorporate this cloud compute cluster approach for their upcoming consoles, which begs the question, why aren't we incorporating these things into our own virtual worlds today? But, hold on, before we go ahead and start attaching limitations or resource requirements to the end user, we've got to also balance this with addressing what compels those end users to participate in such a manner. How is it that such behavior is rewarded? In case of high fidelity, the compute time was initially conceived as the system itself rewarding end users for contributing with some sort of accumulated credits which could be used in world or possibly outside the game world. In the premise of in-world resource gamification, we have to ask what the benefit of doing these things would be to the end user, and to that I would suggest that the end users who spend generated items on a marketplace and for land usage in the world. We already have a rudimentary method of resource management today which we all know to be land impact or prim limit, so this shouldn't come as a surprise when translating that paradigm. In the hypothetical metaverse, the content creator still receives the asking price and any discounts. So, in terms of, say, SL Go, we saw a service arise which will allow a cloud compute cluster to pre-render the virtual world in ultra graphics settings and stream it to the end user for an additional fee. Under compute cluster paradigms where all end users are asked to share compute cycles for the greater good, this would also be a compelling reason for them to generate those resources. So, by incorporating this sort of resource management, whether it's on a larger level or on a micromanagement level, we end up with an organic growth paradigm in a virtual world where once we would have to think about the useful jobs, one could participate in a virtual world to earn credits to spend, host as nightclub builder or whatever, we now have opened up a near endless amount of options for the end user, mining, crafting, vehicles, trade routes, transportation services and more. But, of course, we would have to foresee that happening and plan our virtual world system accordingly to accommodate the massive explosion of content in user interaction. So, when I speak about effective limitations, what I'm really getting at for teleportation and stuff like that is that the average user wouldn't actually see a lot of those limitations if they're actively participating because they're generating more than they're taking back. So, the concurrency aspects taken care of with shared compute cluster approaches, either back end like dual universe or fully distributed like high fidelity, now we have to ask ourselves about the paradigm of interaction inherent in the virtual world itself. From the smallest design choices all the way to the actual metaverse and up, how does it manifest? Personally, I advocate for round planets in a virtual universe for the simple fact that the metaphor of interaction would make sense. With vehicles, trade routes and ultimately giving our end world end users purpose to implement them, we're going to answer whether the system is actually capable from a baseline to actually enable such widespread communication and transportation. Can one build a ship, plane or automobile and circumnavigate the world? Can they even take a contiguous trip at all? Can they leave orbit and discover entirely new planets? Well, in the current paradigm, like open sim the answers are resounding no. I mean, you can of course build these vehicles, but they ultimately have no purpose and the ability to circumnavigate the virtual world or at least explore it in a contiguous manner really doesn't exist. So, there's obviously a lot more that we can cover with the topic, but the purpose of my presentation today has been more about beginning the conversation and not the multitude of details and directions we could go with it. If one were to ask me how to achieve this with open sim then my answer would be simple. We'd have to have a unified body of participants on an entirely new fork of open sim building from the ground up in order to incorporate all the new methodologies and more to a wholly new construct which ultimately would not be backwards compatible but would serve as a vastly more capable and powerful beginning for a long run in scalability and metaphor of interaction. Whether we're inclined to agree with any of the prospects or not, I'm simply presenting what I'm seeing today in the overall industry. What really matters is that in a bigger picture, these advancements are already present and being implemented with or without us elsewhere. Such things as interoperability, modular design, ease of use, stop gap measures and unification for a single and clear end goal are all things we need to work on at every level. The more advanced applications of these new techniques are what will make or ultimately break an aspiring metaverse. So to sum it all up, we all have a choice to make. Do we push for the future or do we get left behind? Thank you for your time today. This presentation and much more is freely available at my booth in the Expo 3 area for you to explore and download. If you'd like to have some questions and comments, some discussion, I'll be there up until later on, probably about 3 p.m. I look forward to seeing everybody there today. Thank you for attending. All right. Thank you. What a great presentation. I did No Man's Sky, I have to admit, and I was pretty bored after a quick while, so I look forward to the changes in the future for all of these things. Again, thank you, Will. And a reminder to our audience, you can see what's coming up on the conference schedule at conference.opensimulator.org. Following this session, the next session will begin at 10.30 and it's entitled Building to Understand Crown Street Station. I encourage you to visit the OSCC16 poster Expo on OSCCCC Expo 3. And we'll see you all back here in just a few minutes. Thank you.