(Informative)
Metaverse is a loose concept considered by many as one of the most promising evolutionary steps of Information and Communication Technology and there are many implementations that can be classified as metaverse instances. So far, however, the metaverse developers made technology decisions that best responded to their needs, often without considering the choices that other developers might have made for similar purposes.
As there have been mounting concerns that such metaverse “walled gardens” do not fully exploit the opportunities offered by current and expected technologies and calls have been made to make metaverse instances “Interoperable”, MPAI has developed two Technical Reports and two Technical Specification that provide solutions to the M-Instance Interoperability issues. They are:
- Technical Report: MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Functionalities introduces definitions, assumptions for the work, a collection of high-level use cases, a collection of exemplary service providers, a set of ~150 Functionalities, review of the main metaverse-enabling technologies, an analysis of metaverse governance needs, and a standardisation roadmap.
- Technical Report: MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Functionality Profiles introduces a revised and extended list of definitions; an operation model of the metaverse based on the notion of Processes performing or requesting other Processes to perform Actions on Items (Items are Data, Metadata, and Qualifiers supported by an M-Instance); an initial identification of Actions, Items, and Basic Data with Use Cases and Functionality Profiles; a collection of representative use cases tested against the Operation Model; and dour initial Functionality Profiles.
- Technical Specification – MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Architecture (MMM-ARC) V1.2 provides means to achieve M-Instance Interoperability by specifying the Functional Requirements of Processes and Actions. These allow Interoperation of two or more M-Instances that execute Processes, and producing Data that comply with the MMM-ARC Functional Requirements, if necessary via a Conversion Service.
- Technical Specification – MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Technologies (MMM-TEC) V1.0 specifies or references Items including Qualifiers to enable interoperability between M-Instances supporting the technologies referenced in the Qualifiers.
M-Instance indicates the type of metaverse specified by the two integrated specifications MMM-ARC V1.2 and MMM-TEC V1.0. The Table of Contents of MMM-ARC merges the references to two specifications into one.
In all Chapters and Sections, Terms beginning with a capital letter are defined in Table 1 if they are specific to this Technical Specification and in Table 2 if they are common to all MPAI Technical Specifications. All Chapters, Sections, and Annexes are Normative unless they are labelled as Informative.