I've been passionate about and working on VR since 1999, when I started Linden Lab and built Second Life.    I'm an entrepreneur and designer/developer with a background in physics, passionate about simulating virtual worlds on lots of computers.  Started my career in '94 at beginning of the consumer internet, worked on video and audio streaming and compression technologies and standards at RealNetworks from 96-99, then began working on Second Life when I felt that network bandwidth and computing/GPU power was sufficient to try to build a large-scale virtual world.  

It seems very likely that the social and shared/collaborative/creative aspects of the most successful VR apps today suggests a growth path for VR similar to what we watched with web technologies in the mid to late 1990's.  The need to visit VR experiences with a common identity (one's avatar) and to share creative assets (for example 3D content) from one location to the other suggests a client/server strategy similar to the web, with a number of common standards at both the level of the protocol and possibly the software/plugin stack.   

I'd like to lead a discussion on what standards will be needed to enable large-scale, general purpose VR, where millions of VR servers will be connected to by billions of end-users.   It seems possible that standards for low-latency 3D audio, identity, server and digital asset certificates, and unique naming services (perhaps similar to DNS) may be needed as general use of VR for areas like education, e-commerce, and creative exploration becomes widespread.   Social/shared VR has some requirements that seem beyond existing web standards.  For example, the inherently read/write nature of VR spaces - where the visitors to virtual spaces often need to make changes to the content they are near and interacting with, suggests that a standardized mechanism for changing and synchronizing changes to 3D content may speed growth.  Also, the need to be present in different virtual spaces using a common identity and visual appearance suggests the need for both standards and security related to entering different VR servers. 


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Philip Rosedale
Founder, Second Life, High Fidelity