16-07-2013, 02:24 PM
Towards 3D Internet: Why, What, and How?
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Abstract
The World Wide Web, which has started as a document
repository, is rapidly transforming to a full fledged virtual
environment that facilitates services, interaction, and com-
munication. Under this light, the Semantic Web and Web
2.0 movements can be seen as intermediate steps of a natu-
ral evolution towards a new paradigm, the 3D Internet. We
provide an overview of the concept 3D Internet and discuss
why it is a goal worth pursuing, what it does entail, and
how one can realize it. Our goal in this paper is to discuss
a research agenda and raise interest in networking, security,
distributed computing, and machine learning communities.
We explore first the motivation for the 3D Internet and the
possibilities it brings. Subsequently, we investigate the spe-
cific system level and research challenges that need to be
addressed in order to make the 3D Internet a reality.
Introduction
The Internet is evolving to become the de-facto cy-
berspace or virtual environment facilitating communication,
business, and entertainment on a global scale. On the other
hand, metaverses or virtual worlds such as Second Life (SL)
or World of Warcraft (WoW) are much younger when com-
pared to other Web technologies. Today, the success and
momentum of virtual worlds are undeniable. The market
for MMOGs is estimated to be worth more than one billion
US dollars and such metaverses are fast becoming ”signifi-
cant platforms” in the converged media world according to
some analysts. Virtual worlds are increasingly seen as more
than game and interpreted within a business context rather
than entertainment. The view that metaverses will play a
significant role in the future is shared by many researchers
and professionals in the field. Among them are the partici-
pants of the metaverse roadmap (MVR) who aim to explore
multiple pathways to the 3D enhanced web [2], the Croquet
Consortium [1], as well as the VRML and X3D communi-
ties.
3D Internet: What?
We present and discuss a 3D Internet architecture as an
illustrative example. It shares the time-tested main princi-
ples and underlying architecture of the current Internet as
well as many semantic web concepts. The operational prin-
ciples the 3D Internet shares with its predecessor include
open and flexible architecture, open protocols, simplicity at
the network core, intelligence at the edges, and distributed
implementation. A simple graphical depiction of the pro-
posed 3D Internet architecture is provided in Figure 1. We
adopt here the terms universe, world, and webplace as 3D
counterparts of WWW, website, and subdomain, respec-
tively. We describe each components’ functionality briefly
below:
World servers: provide user- or server-side created,
static and dynamic content making up the specific webplace
(3D environment) including visuals, physics engine, avatar
data, media, and more to client programs. A world server
has the important task of coordinating the co-existence of
connected users, initiating communication between them,
and ensuring in-world consistency in real time.
Intelligent Environments
Emerging fields such as ubiquitous computing and ambi-
ent intelligence draw heavily from adaptive and intelligent
algorithms. They are concerned with computing and net-
working technology that is unobtrusively embedded in the
everyday environment of human users. The emphasis is on
user-friendliness, efficient and distributed services support,
user empowerment, and support for human interactions. All
this assumes a shift away from desktop or portable comput-
ers to a variety of devices accessible via intelligent inter-
faces. The 3D Internet, which is a virtual ubiquitous com-
puting environment, provides the perfect testbed for devel-
oping these ideas and emulating them in realistic 3D set-
tings with real users.
Conclusion
We have provided an overview of the concept 3D Inter-
net and discussed the motivation behind it as well as the spe-
cific research directions in the fields of networking, security,
distributed computing, and machine learning. We believe
that at this point in time we are facing a unique opportunity
for the evolution of the Internet towards a much more ver-
satile, interactive, and usable version: the 3D Internet. The
emerging 3D applications and desktop paradigms, increas-
ingly interactive nature of the Web 2.0, the Semantic Web
efforts, widespread availability of powerful GPUs, popular-
ity of novel input devices, and changing demographics of
Internet users towards the younger, computer-literate gener-
ations, all provide the basis for the 3D Internet ®evolution.
The hype surrounding metaverses (especially SL) should be
seen under this light and taken as an indicator of the fact
that many businesses are aware of the 3D Internet’s poten-
tial. However, to make the 3D Internet a reality it is nec-
essary and important to start and continue multidisciplinary
research.