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(Informative)

MMM-TEC defines a metaverse instance (M-Instance) as an Information and Communication Technologies platform populated by Processes that:

  1. Operate with various degrees of autonomy and interactivity under the responsibility of the M-Instance Manager, Third-Party Service Providers or humans all residing in the Universe, i.e., the real world.
  2. Sense Data from U-Environments, i.e., portions of the Universe.
  3. Produce three types of Items, i.e., Data that has been Identified in – and thus recognised by – the M-Instance:
    1. Digitised – i.e., sensed from the Universe – possibly animated by activities in the Universe.
    2. Virtual – i.e., imported from the Universe as Data or internally generated.
    3. Mixed – Digitised and Virtual.
  4. Perform Process Actions – either on their initiative, or driven by the actions of humans or machines in the Universe – that combine:
    1. The name of a specific Action, whose name may be prepended by:
      1. MM: to indicate Actions performed inside the M-Instance, e.g., MM-Animate using a stream or a command to animate a 3D Model Object with a Spatial Attitude (defined as Position, Orientation, and their velocities and accelerations).
      2. MU: MU-Embed: to indicate Actions originated in the M-Instance but influencing the Universe, e.g., to place a physical object (R-Item) at a U-Location with a Spatial Attitude.
      3. UM: to indicate Actions in the Universe originated influencing the M-Instance, e.g., UM-Capture
        to acquire Data by capturing a scene or an object at a U-Location with a Spatial Attitude with a Qualifier, and Rights.
    2. Items on which the Action is performed or are required for the Action to be performed, such as Asset, Audio Object, Audio-Visual Scene, and where (M-Location and/or U-Location).
    3. Process(es) with which the Action is performed.
    4. Time during which the Process Action is requested to be and the time it will be performed.
  5. May hold Rights on an Item, i.e., may perform the set of Process Actions that are listed as Rights. The notion of Rights may also be applied to an Item to signal which Processes may perform which Process Actions on it.
  6. Affect U-Environments and/or M-Instances using Items in ways that are:
    1. Consistent with the goals of the M-Instance as expressed by the Rules.
    2. Within the M-Capabilities of the M-Instance, e.g., to support Transactions.
    3. Respecting applicable laws and regulations.
  7. Perform activities strictly inside the M-Instance or have various degrees of interaction with Data sensed from and/or actuated in the Universe.
  8. May be characterised as:
    1. Services providing specific functionalities, such as content authoring.
    2. Devices connecting the Universe to the M-Instance and the M-Instance to the Universe.
    3. Apps running on Devices.
    4. Users representing and acting on behalf of human entities residing in the Universe and possibly rendered as a Persona, i.e., an avatar.
  9. May request another Process to perform Process Actions on its behalf by using the Inter-Process Protocol, possibly after Transacting a Value (i.e., an Amount in a Currency) to a Wallet.

An M-Instance is managed by an M-Instance Manager. At the initial time, the M-Instance Manager has Rights covering the M-Instance and may decide to define certain subsets inside the M-Instance – called M-Environments – on which it has Rights and to attach Rights to them.

A Registering human may:

  1. Request to Register and open an Account of a certain class.
  2. Be requested to provide their Personal Profile and possibly to perform a Transaction.
  3. Obtain in exchange a set of Rights that their Processes may exercise. Rights have Levels indicating that the a specific set of Rights is:
    1. Internal, e.g., assigned by the M-Instance at Registration time according to the M-Instance Rules and Account type.
    2. Acquired, e.g., obtained by initiative of the Process.
    3. Granted to the Process by another Process.

MMM-TEC does not specify how an M-Instance verifies that the Process Actions performed by a Process comply with the Process’s Rights or the M-Instance Rules. An M-Instance can decide to verify the full set of Activity Data (the log of performed Process Actions), or to make verifications based on claims by another Process, to make random verifications, or to not make any verification at all. Therefore, MMM-TEC does not specify how a M-Instance Manager can sanction non-complying Processes.

In some cases, an M-Instance could be wastefully too costly as an undertaking if all the technologies required by  MMM-TEC were mandatorily to be implemented, even if the particular M-Instance had limited scope. MMM-TEC specifies Profiles to facilitate the implementations of conforming M-Instances that are unduly burdened by the requirements of other application domains.

A Profile includes only a subset of the Actions and Items that are expected to be needed and are shared by a sizeable number of applications. MMM-TEC defines four Profiles (see Figure 1):

  1. Baseline Profile enables basic applications such as lecture, meeting, and hang-out.
  2. Finance Profile enables trading activities.
  3. Management Profile enables a controlled ecosystem with more advanced functionalities.
  4. High Profile enables all the functionalities of the Management Profile with a few additional functionalities of its own.

Figure 1 – MMM-TEC V2.0 Profiles

MPAI developed and used some use cases in the two MPAI-MMM Technical Reports published in 2023 and developed to facilitate the MMM-ARC and MMM-TEC Technical Specifications. However, the Verification Use Cases have been included in MMM-TEC V2.0 to verify that the currently specified Actions and Items support those Use Cases.

Figure 2 gives a summary view of some of the basic MMM-TEC elements.

Figure 2 – Main elements of an M-Instance

The fast development of certain technology areas is one of the issues that has so far prevented the development of metaverse standards. MMM-TEC deals with this issue by providing JSON Schemas and semantics for all Items. A JSON Schema may reference Qualifiers, MPAI-defined Data Types that provide additional information to the Data in the form of:

  1. Sub-Type (e.g., which colour space is used in a Visual Data Type).
  2. Format (e.g., which compression or file/streaming format is used in a Speech Data Type).
  3. Attributes (e.g., which Binaural Cues are used in an Audio Data Type).

For instance, a Process receiving an Object can understand from the Qualifier referenced in the Object’s JSON data whether it has the required technology to process it, or else it has to rely on a Conversion Service to obtain a version of the Object matching its P-Capabilities. This approach should help to prolong the life of the MMM-TEC specification as in many cases only the Qualifier specification will need to be updated and not the MMM-TEC specification.

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