NextVerso.ORG

From Teleport to Stargate

Foreword:
One of the most visionary features of a NextVerso, amongst flying and teleportation - which were banned in the SnowCrash Metaverse but are permitted in Second Life - is not only the bare creation of object, but also the Kiss of Life itself, then letting everything evolve under local physical rules.

This post is aimed to draw a possible evolution of virtual worlds’ (i.e. Second Life) physics. A metaverse with these features would have a great appeal in the field of simulation and unique characteristics when searching for new ways in social interactions.

Welcome in Ne[x]tVerso!

NextVerso Axiomas:

Key innovations in NextVerso physics are:
1- Dualistic nature of objects/scripts, which reminds the analogous wave/particle duality of light.
2- Quadridimensional and relativistic nature of the virtual universe, with side-effects on global sincronicity and geography of the whole.
3- Local overriding of physical laws by generical transformation functions of global measurement units (lenght, time, mass).
4- The NextVerso’s cyberspace is NOT empty by default.

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1) Dualistic nature of objects:
Any NextVerso primitive has an equivalent originator script. A cube IS the script of the cube. The script carries not only geometric informations about the object - which can be augmented with materials etc - but also dynamics, behaviour and evolution rules which are subjected to local physical laws (see under). So, the NextVerso Scripting Language is “augmented” by graphical,primitive instructions and behaviours.

From the avatar point of view, the creation of a cube seems to be the creation of just a graphical object. But he could reach the same result writing a script. This double nature is reflected even in creation gestures and in interfaces, thus accomodating both “visual” and “command line”, textual, programming users.

So, we leave the old concept of an object “containing” a script, like in Second Life, to reach a real equivalence between graphical and textual form. This, when using a well-chosen scripting language, will open up many possibilities: for example, by supporting the so-called “reflection” metaprogramming feature, a script will be able to examine and modify themself and other scripts. This enables the creation of generative and evolutionistic algorithms which - more than others - can use the NextVerso physics.

The script concept can be used in a even more generic and extensive manner. For example, objects collision and proximity can be made even richer if objects can exchange scripts - which is, after all, en extension of the classical message passing mechanism found in event-driven programming. In this way two objects, just because they are one near the other or they are colliding, can pass around generic instructions, which could be just change their colors or completely modify their essence.

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2) Quadridimensional/relativistic nature of the virtual world:

A fourth, temporal dimension, deeply embedded in the physical NextVerso rules, is added to the “classical”, three-dimensional space of other virtual worlds. The concept of “grid” or “map” is obsolete: the whole universe is made of both contiguous and non-contiguous regions, like planets. Movements between regions is always istantaneous, which implies some space-temporal non-linearity of the whole NextVerso. So, adding the next point 3 we will have some interesting side-effects…

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3) Local modification of physical laws

Even if, by default, physical units of a region will equal universal units (which are inspired to MKS system, which is lenght, mass and time), which are immutable and used as a reference by the whole universe, every region can redefine their nature. For example, a region could multiply lenghts by a constant factor, acting as a 3D microscope or a miniaturizer (do you remember Kandor, Superman’s city-in-a-bottle?) on every object in it, or it could redefine time, so that you could have regions where time flows faster or is nearly stopped.

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before talking about bullet number 4, we want to talk deeply about these three axiomas

A place for evolutive experiments
Moreover, using generic transforms instead of just moltiplicative factors, we can get regions where mass is not constant but is function of time, so that those laws like E = 1/2 mV^2 or F = mA do not hold anymore… or places where time flows in a sinusoidal way, so that a pendulum will not move for most of his time… obviously these regions are very interesting for researching: what would it happen to planets if you could change the centripetal acceleration formula? Obviously each region will have a control panel, which in turn will just be the graphical form of a script representing the region’s physical characteristics. NextVerso becomes a powerful research toolkit.

Avatars as Observers
Avatars, obviously, must be immune to such space/time/matter modifications to be able to experience them (if not, they would change too, according to those laws and, subjectively, they couldn’t be able to see any change). Their position and point of view will never modify those natural laws. So, avatars are always “real-time”, but also “real-space” and “real-mass”: their units are always synchronized with Universal Time, Mass and Space of the NextVerso. Time travel (which BTW implies paradoxes and should pose complex technical challenges, like a Continuous Backup of Everything) is not possible; everything an avatar can see is subjective, or comes from a point-of-view modification, like a floating camera. When observing a nearby region with different physics laws, some visuals like blurring or some kind of image warping will enforce the boundary between the regions.

The Stargate
Every time a boundary between regions defining different local physics is crossed, we talk of a “stargate” crossing (with an obvious, great graphics effect!). Stargates can be implicit, at boundaries of adjacent regions, or explicits, in which case they are real (?) quadri-dimensional teletransportation devices able to send the avatar anywhere.

Region, objects and spatial scale
Even the region itself is NOT subject to space/time/mass modification, only contained objects are. So, a region could be “overflowed” by contained objects, or for some case it couldn’t be able to mantain its internal coherence. In this case the region collapses, becomes unavailable and must be reset by a region manager.

Region physics can influence not only the behaviour of objects, but even their representation. Due to his double nature, the script/object carries the rules for both visuals and behaviours; there can even exist materials (which, again, are scripts) which are not subject to aging or distortions imposed by a local redefinition of physycal laws (i.e. light speed is constant in any reference frame). In the meanwhile, another script like a tree will contain growth rules which will be completely subject to local physics overrides.

Spread Life into objects
Every object/script, when created, is stopped. A metallic cube will not rust. To start evolving to local physical rules an object must be “booted”. The boot command - visually reproduced with a creation gesture by the creator avatar - will start the script/object behaviours, while the initial state is just a representational part of the script.

Social side-effects
An interesting side-effect of this asynchronous time flow is relative to social experiences. Many successful communication means - from Twitter to IM to blogging to emails - are based upon non-synchronous mechanisms, while nowadays virtual worlds, with their need for online presence - are bound to synchronous events.

A universe with many timescales and an evolution running independently from human presence will push forward social dynamics. Asynch virtual worlds media are still to be invented and, just as example, you could think to such a weirdness like “leaving a mark of himself” as a message for next visitors.

* MKS system is a subset of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units

back on track

4) Don’t reinvent the cyber-wheel

We know since many years generative techniques and algorithms (cfr the amazing “The Product”, Farb-rausch, 2001, http://www.farb-rausch.com/productions.php ) which can enable us to populate an otherwise empty cyberspace, so that we could explore it without the need to fill it explicitly. Fractals and chaos theory can give us infinite textures, sounds, polyhedra and animations and consequently mountains, lakes, rivers, lands, forests and whole planets in a reproducible and just-in-time manner, without the need to develop and distribute them. Obviously this would not substitute the need of empty cyberspace; it is just an opportunity.

A world born out from chaos should have a goal, in order to develop evolutionary dynamics and avoid to create infinite deserts. The goal of a region, which will keep it from shutting down itself, is to host life. Chaos generates, life evolves.

Moreover, thanks to his characteristics, the Nextverso is an infinite continuum where matter (elemental objects) can aggregate and create new regions. So, it does NOT exists an explicit map of the universe, which should be consequential to explorations and knowledge sharing between avatars.

In this way, cyberspace exploration becomes part of the NextVerso economy, and new regions’ discovery (which are undistinguishable from user-generated-content ones) is a basis for commerce. Such activity could lead to acquisition of some property or usage rights, within one could get some monetary gain. NextVerso is the first metaverse exploration-ready, out of the box.

Conclusions: Techs and Biz Model

There isn’t any feature in this paper which leads towards a client/server architecture. A single, DNS-like registry to store regions topology should be enough to make everything work.

Even from the business model point of view, a distributed architecture would not pose any constraint upon neither system growth nor single-node costs. Any user with an internet-exposed server could - with a cost analogous to a web domain registration - build his region. Hosting and backup services could be delegated to some NextVerso enabled ISP.

P2P approach frees from need for localized computing power. Every user will choose for scalability and complexity of his world, whose success will depend also upon the world usability, just like for WWW sites. The “mainframe” centralization model lost since many years, and should be avoided if not absolutely needed.

We believe it would be a bad mistake not to use an already-existant programming language as the NextVerso scripting language. There are a lot of working, efficient, tested languages out there, to develop still another language. For example Python is robust, free, extensible, complete and has all the features as a NextVerso scripting language candidate.

The NextVerso interface itself should NOT be based upon buttons, windows and classic UI elements. Immersion and exploration should be vehiculated by visuals and feedback clues. The interface should be the virtual world itself: why have an “open” button if there is a knob on the door? Why should there be a “map window” when I can jump two miles high and look from above?

Why should tables have legs, in a virtual world? Yes, there are good reasons… but we believe it is time to push the CyberSpace a little forward.

Leeander&Babele fecit,
January 20th and 21th 2008

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