(Informative)
Metaverse is a loose concept that many consider one of the most promising evolutionary steps of Information and Communication Technology. Implementations that can be classified as “metaverse” are manifold. However, metaverse designers and developers tend to make technology decisions that best respond to their needs, with little consideration of the need to interact with other metaverse instances.
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 addressing the following issues:
- Technical Report: MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Functionalities introduces definitions, assumptions, a collection of high-level use cases, a collection of exemplary service providers, a set of ~150 Functionalities that a metaverse instance should or might support, a review of the main metaverse-enabling technologies, an analysis of metaverse governance issues, and a standardisation roadmap.
- Technical Report: MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Functionality Profiles introduces a revises an extended list of definitions; a metaverse “Operation Model” based on the notion of Processes performing or requesting other Processes to perform Actions on Items, i.e., Data, Metadata, and Qualifiers supported by an M-Instance, the type of metaverse to be specified by MPAI; 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 four initial Functionality Profiles.
Having developed a sufficient understanding of the needs, MPAI has developed two Technical Specifications that provide solutions to the M-Instance Interoperability issues:
- Technical Specification – MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Architecture (MMM-ARC) 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 produce 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) specifies or references specifications of Items including Qualifiers that enable interoperability between M-Instances supporting the technologies referenced by the Qualifiers.
Technical Specification – MPAI Metaverse Model (MPAI-MMM) – Technologies (MMM-TEC) V2.0 merges revised versions of MPAI-ARC V1.1 and MPAI-TEC V1.0 into an integrated specification.
In all Chapters and Sections, Terms beginning with a capital letter are defined in Table 1. All MPAI-defined Terms are accessible online. All Chapters are Normative unless they are labelled as Informative.
