Mapping a path for the 3D Web

With the spread of online games, virtual worlds and services such as Google Earth and MySpace.com, people may soon be spending more time, communicating more and shopping more in complex 3D Web environments.

That's why several dozen of the most influential figures in video game design, geospatial engineering, high-tech research, software development, social networking, telecommunications and other fields gathered in Palo Alto on Friday and Saturday for the first Metaverse Roadmap Summit.

The event, held at the SRI International and produced by the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF), was the initial step toward what organisers and attendees alike hope will be a coherent path to the so-called metaverse — an Internet dominated by 3D technology, social spaces and economies.

As such, the invite-only group spent the two days in a series of talks, small breakout discussions and group presentations — all in the pursuit of consensus about what the metaverse, or some would say 3D Web, will look like in 10 years.

In the end, organisers will sift through hours of recordings of the various discussions and plan to produce a public document by the end of the summer that will lay out what they believe were the overriding conclusions and directions of the event. First, though, attendees will pore over two drafts of the document in the coming months to weigh in on the organisers' take on the so-called road map.

Ultimately, the ASF hopes to produce regular small Metaverse Roadmap gatherings, as well as full summits at least every two years.

In the meantime, the organisers have their work cut out for them, because agreement about the metaverse of 2016 was hard to find.

While many took issue with the basic premise that an overriding 3D Web will be in place within 10 years, it was clear that most in attendance relished mixing it up as part of an august group that included Microsoft's Robert Scoble, former Sony Online Entertainment chief creative officer Raph Koster, PARC researcher Bob Moore, online game pioneer Randy Farmer, There.com founder and currently IMVU chief executive Will Harvey, and CNET Networks editor at large Esther Dyson. (CNET Networks is ZDNet UK's parent company.)

"I thought we were going to focus a bit more on virtual worlds, because when I hear the term metaverse, I hear 3D virtual worlds. And we ended up talking about virtual worlds as well as augmented reality, which to me is kind of separate technology in its vision," Moore said. But "it was good to get this group of people together because it is a group with a lot of common interests. And so I think it's good to get the group as a network together."

Several times on Friday and Saturday, participants went off in groups of six or so to brainstorm various questions about the future of the metaverse. Primarily, the questions revolved around specifically what the metaverse of 2016 will look like and about what the chief research and development challenges might be in the interim.

After each breakout session, the groups returned to an auditorium to present their thoughts.

One of the questions asked most frequently throughout the event was whether an overriding metaverse of 2016 will be commercially owned or open source. There was little agreement about that, but it was clear that the companies seen as most likely to provide the tools for a single metaverse upon which many 3D, social applications could be built are Microsoft and Google.

In part, Google was seen as more likely because of its development of Google Earth and its recent purchase of the maker of the 3D modeling software, Sketchup.

But some felt that Microsoft could make a major play to become the metaverse provider and that it may well seek to buy something like the open-ended virtual world "Second Life" as a precursor to a larger play in the field.

Still, as the groups reported back, it seemed that few had reached clear visions of what the metaverse of 2016 will be, despite...