Wave Issue 9612 11/8/96 Article 6-01

***Living Worlds
by David Lohse

On October 31 at the "Earth to Avatars" conference, a consortium of
leading VRML and Internet companies announced Living Worlds, an avatar
standardization initiative for VRML 2.0. The proposed spec, which was
developed by ParaGraph International, Sony Corp. and Black Sun
Interactive, has been endorsed by more than 30 companies including:

3Name3D, 3D Labs, Acuris, 3rd Dimension Technologies, Aereal Inc., Apple
Computer, Archite X, Axial Systems, Barnegat Communications, Black Sun
Interactive, Boxoffice.net, Chaco Communications, CyberPuppy, CyberTown,
Extempo Systems, Fijitsu Laboratories LTD, First Virtual Holdings, GrR
HomeNet, IBM, Integrated Data Systems, Intel Corporation, Intervista,
Media Authoring Center - George Mason University, Netcarta, Neuromedia
Studios, Onlive Technologies, Oracle Corp., OZ Interactive, Paragraph
International, PeopleWorld, Planet 9 Studios, Sense 8, Silicon Graphics,
Sony Corporation, Velocity,vivid studios, VREAM, VRMLSite, Worlds Inc.

By offering a standard for avatars, the proposal would allow users to
visit any VRML 2.0 world using the same avatar, an important advancement
for the widespread use of online 3D worlds as well as giving VRML another
advantage as the open standard of choice. Bernie Roehl, a co-author of
the spec and a leading contributor in the VRML community best described
to us how the technology will operate:

"The idea is that Living Worlds will provide a level playing field, and
that companies will compete by providing multi-user technologies (or
'MUTechs') that run underneath the Living Worlds interface.

The companies that collaborated on the initial proposal all have
MUTechs, and some of them are making them public (notably Black Sun's
CyberSockets). The Open Community proposal (formerly called Universal
Worlds) is another public MUTech specification. CyberSockets and Open
Community are roughly analogous to each other, in that each provides a
multi-user API over top of the underlying network (e.g. TCP/IP)
infrastructure."

The Living Worlds proposal, which is now open to public review (although
the adoption process has not yet been decided), can be found at:

www.livingworlds.com