This seems to be an attempt to build a... protocol? engine? both? for moving programmable entities between volumes of space that may be controlled by different hosts.
The "operating system" / Metaverse verbiage is a little grandiose, but I really like the idea. Or maybe I just miss Adobe Atmosphere :)
That condition describes the state of the two technologies, but doesn't, to me, strike as an actual problem.
"Real-time collaboration of disparate entities through video / voice / instant message is sufficiently inferior to physically present collaboration as to be a detriment to ____" would be a problem, for example.
I definitely agree that it's really cool tech, and would be great if a truly seamless MMO virtual environment were possible.
But, perhaps past attempts have sputtered out for lack of a few actual problems providing impetus for the task. Building something awesome should be reason enough, but often seems to fall short of what's necessary to see an effort succeed.
Edit: I didn't see other comments in a similar vein as this one that you've already replied to, so, I do consider the notion "asked and answered".
I struggle to come up with problems that VR solves as well, and really like the likening of it to paper or video as a communication medium.
Though, maybe we limit our exploration of its possibilities by trying to fit it into that or other existing mental schemas.
Okay, but why would I want to do that?
... for what purpose? Web pages are hard to simplify. Even harder to transform, in a generally applicable way, in to 3D objects that hold the full meaning and functionality of their present-era 2D brethren.
"But why?" is a totally fair question, and I don't think I can produce a satisfactory answer. I've spent a good deal of time thinking about concrete use cases for VR, and, well... it's a medium, like paper, or like video - but it's interactive, so it has more in common with the telephone, or video games, or your web browser. It can be more illustrative to try and imagine things you can't do (and now I really sound like I've drunk the VR Kool-Aid, huh?).
Can I ask if your skepticism is specific to this project, or to the idea of a distributed, programmable VR platform?
Well, I've been down the same path before, as with others here .. judging by the earlier comments. I don't discount 3D, far from it, however my conclusion, personally, was that different people consider different types of visualizations preferable or inherantly clearer. For instance, a statistician, mathematician, programmer, poet, sculptor or gamer may wish to visualize or interact with the same information in a very different way. If you accept this temporarily for the sake of argument, then take those same different input/interaction paradigms and start to translate them across multiple cultures and languages, I believe you get an even higher number of preferences. Trying to create the one true standard for interaction with mock-physical representations of aphysical notions may just be trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
