{"id":1298,"date":"2007-06-11T11:00:56","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T15:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1298"},"modified":"2008-03-21T15:09:55","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T19:09:55","slug":"layers-of-peer-to-peer-worlds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/?p=1298","title":{"rendered":"Layers of Peer-to-Peer Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first time I experienced a virtual simulation was in 1985. The military systems on which I was being trained were usually nothing more than big interactive screens inside a mocked-up space; not nearly as fun as firefighting training in blazing boiler rooms full of smoke, or ship flooding trainers where you had to team together to escape through a hatch leading to a flooded room above<\/em> you (tough to do). Those primitive systems were still interesting to me though, mostly because of my passion for filmmaking, with which I saw obvious similarities. It wasn’t until a few years later when I read Gibson’s “Burning Chrome<\/a>” that I saw the potential which sparked my return to college for a second degree.
\n
\nShortly after graduation, in the mid-90’s, around the time “virtual reality” was making its first big splash, I picked up “Virtual Reality, Through the New Looking Glass<\/a>“. The book is sufficiently dated that it’s now mostly just taking up space, but it taught me a core underlying issue which persists to this day: centralized versus distributed.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Yesterday I happened across a post on 3pointD (Link)<\/a> regarding Outback: Online and what appears to be its underlying proprietary<\/em> peer-to-peer framework. From the entry:<\/p>\n

First, they tackled the challenge of indexing users in space, designing a spatial index that allows the various clients to discover users in the 3D space around them, without having to have all that presence information contained on a single server. Secondly, they tackled the problem of interacting, using multithreading techniques (among other things that got lost in a poor connection) to optimize communication between clients. Third came a security solution that obfuscates users’ IP addresses<\/strong> while still allowing clients to transmit the necessary information across the network.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’d earlier speculated that Outback: Online was something like what they’re describing (reLink<\/a>):<\/p>\n

an Australian virtual world project currently underway, which sounds very much like Croquet with a persistent and constantly updated “seed”. In other words, they’re taking the old argument over virtual worlds – centralized versus distributed – and done what I believe to be the logical thing and created a hybrid<\/strong>; note that Linden Lab’s virtual world is centralized. This hybrid model probably has its own quirks, and I’m dreaming those up already<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first “quirk” that came to mind was, of course, how to deal with security. It appears they have a solution to this issue, as indicated in the explanation. It’s too bad this solution appears<\/em> to be proprietary and probably<\/em> has a centralized component which reinforces proprietary control.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

This morning, I surfed through another post on the Meshverse Journal (Link)<\/a> regarding the previously mentioned, standards-based “hybrid” distribution system (reLink<\/a>). What I want to point out is something I’ve previously raised (reLink<\/a>) and which I raised again only yesterday (reLink<\/a>): avatar portability. As the Meshverse Journal clarifies to unnamed parties:<\/p>\n

All modern PC’s can run webservers, but what Google Gears adds is a database and UI that will not only empower individual applications, but enable<\/strong> organizations of all sizes and even individuals to collaborate in grids … Now that the genie is out of the bottle people will look to deploy other database servers locally<\/strong> … Imagine Google Gears solutions running on these machines which will safely collaborate with other peers as well as the web<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So while Outback: Online’s peer-to-peer system sounds interesting, it also sounds to me like a layer that will sit atop something else. And that something else could very well be a secure Croquet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first time I experienced a virtual simulation was in 1985. The military systems on which I was being trained were usually nothing more than big interactive screens inside a mocked-up space; not nearly as fun as firefighting training in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1298\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.rebang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}