Working Group Name: Open Grid Protocol (OGPX) Chairs: TBD Area and Area Directors: Applications Area Lisa Dusseault Alexey Melnikov Responsible Area Director: TBD Mailing List: ogpx@ietf.org http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ogpx Description of Working Group: *** question: should we require HTTP(S) as our required, core transport? *** question: is this a protocol or a protocol suite? Virtual Worlds (VWs) are of increasing interest to the Internet community. Innumerable examples exist of such applications, most using proprietary protocols. With their roots in games and social interaction, Virtual Worlds are now being used increasingly in business, education and information exchange. The objective of the OGPX working group is to define an application-layer wire protocol needed for large-scale virtual worlds. Characteristics of the virtual worlds under consideration are: * network hosts implementing a virtual world may be operated by multiple, collaborating organizations. * the state of a virtual world and its contents persist independently of client sessions and applications. * virtual worlds are partitioned into regions for the purpose of position dependent service resolution. * Users have a single, unique presence in a virtual world represented by an agent which may be rendered as an avatar. The protocol should carry information about the virtual environment, its contents and its inhabitants. The protocol should describe interaction semantics for these virtual worlds, independent of transport, leveraging existing standards where practical. It should define interoperability expectations for server to server interactions as well as client-server interactions. The working group will define a binding to a widely deployed transport with a mature tool chain. Foundational components of the protocol include the publication of: * an abstract type system, suitable for describing the application protocol in an implementation neutral manner, * a security model describing trust relationships between hosts, * guidelines for the use of existing authentication and confidentiality mechanisms, * an application-layer protocol for establishing the user's presence, * an application-layer protocol for moving a user's presence from one authoritative host to another, * format descriptions for objects and avatars in a virtual world, and * an application-layer protocol for identifying agents, and requesting information about them. Goals and Milestones: * October 2009 "OGP: Requirements and Introduction" to the IESG as an Informational RFC * October 2009 "OGP : Abstract Dynamic Structured Data" to the IESG as Proposed Standard * October 2010 "OGP : Foundational Concepts and Request-Response Transport Bindings" to the IESG as Proposed Standard * February 2010 "OGP : Guidelines for Host Authentication" to the IESG as an Informational RFC * February 2010 "OGP : Service Establishment" to the IESG as Proposed Standard * February 2010 "OGP : Client Application Launch Message" to the IESG as an Informational RFC * February 2010 "OGP : Simulation Presence Establishment" to the IESG as Proposed Standard * June 2010 "OGP : Primitive Object Format" to the IESG as Proposed Standard * June 2010 "OGP : Digital Asset Access" to the IESG as Proposed Standard * June 2010 "OGP : Entity Identifiers" to the IESG as Proposed Standard