Meeting 1 - Meeting Notes

[AdamFrisby]

Meeting 1 (Introductions)

Held: Tuesday 11th January 2022 at 1700 UTC.
In Attendence: Adam, A., antpb, Cafezinho, cdata, humbletim, jeana, jin, Koolala, Lyuma, Meticulac, mrmetaverse, Rick W, Robert, SafariMonkey. (and others who may have joined later)

Agenda

• Introductions: Participants were invited to introduce themselves and their expertise.
• Open Floor
  • Adam:
    • Discussed personal goals - standardising ABI & API
    • Prior experience 25+yrs in virtual worlds (most professionally). Happy to contribute knowledge from previous projects and expertise
    • Direct experience implementing scripting runtimes and APIs in virtual worlds
  • Robert:
    • Interested in the API available, as well as a performance focus to allow e.g. Javascript to be embedded within these applications and creating a Scene Graph API for Interactive 3D Scenes & Content
  • Cdata:
    • Interested in capturing widest audience and list of use cases
  • Lyuma
    • Interested in building building proof of concepts and starting small - experimenting first.
  • Koolala:
    • Less interested in standardising the ABI/API, and has some concerns about ways this can be monetised (e.g. NFT projects).
  • humbletim:
    • Interested in bringing in other stakeholders, and a focus on sandboxing and security
    • Webpages don’t allow random visitors to bring in scripting - but this is what we may be enabling, bringing foreign content into ‘webpages’ is quite difficult
    • Wants to balance utility and security
  • Wider group discussion about sandboxing
    • API limitations
    • Memory use
  • cdata:
    • Suggestion to do a review of wasm (Adam: seconded, volunteering)
  • Robert:
    • Process discussion on the importance of a contributor agreement when contributing to the specification (either samples, or just technical recommendations). Need to be careful of the W3C Rules.
  • Rick W:
    • Interested in contributing feedback as a potential user of the specification
  • Wider group discussion of Scope
    • Adam: interested in specifying “the widest possible array” of use cases, enabling any 3D application from games to serious applications to use the functionality.
    • Adam: Suggestion to look at Game Engine APIs as a good starting point - but obviously not to crib directly from.
  • Group discussion of timeline
    • Should we pre-empt the large tech majors?
  • Group discussion of Exploration
    • It was encouraged for participants to “go out and experiment!”
    • Also suggested it is worth looking extensively at past platforms
  • Rick W:
    • RP1 Good inspiration - the idea of jumping from game to game to school, etc.
      • Holy Grail - one entry point, all environments
  • SafariMonkey:
    • Consellation Project / Interop between whole engines
  • Discussion of Engine Neutrality
• Meeting Regularity
  • VOTE:
    • Tuesdays at 1600 UTC: 6 Votes For (Adam, Robert, mrmetaverse, SafariMonkey, A. Mike)
    • Tuesdays at 1700 UTC: 4 Votes For (Koolala, mrmetaverse, Rick W, cdata)
    • Tuesdays at 1800 UTC: 0 Votes
  • Proposal to alternate substantive working group meetings with knowledge and demo sessions on alternate weeks:
    • PASS: 9 Votes to 0, 3 Abstain (in favor: Adam, RickW, SafariMonkey, Koolala, Robert, cdata, antpb, jeana, Lyuma)
    • First meeting next week at 1600 UTC (18th Jan 2022) - Introduction to WASM
• Retrospectives
  • Discussed but deferred for a future meeting

Next Meeting: Tuesday 18th January 2022 - Workshop & Demo Meeting: Introduction to WASM
Location: Discord

[AdamFrisby]

Record of votes & attendance:

[robertlong]

Here's my notes as well:

Adam

• Key items to work on:
  • WASM Sandbox
  • WASM SDK with standardized API
• Goal to get things out in the open for experimentation soon
  Robert
• Would like to see a standard scene graph API
• High level API for integration into other engines
• With good performance
  cdata
• Make our work achievable (head in the clouds but grounded in what we can achieve
• Need to appeal to others and bring them into this group (edited)
  Lyuma
• Achieve a standard ABI
  Koolala
• Doesn't believe we need a standard ABI or SDK
• We need a standard format for interacting with WASM in VR
• Concerns around NFTs
• Does think that we should continue working on an ABI or SDK if that's what we're looking for in this group (edited)
  Humbletim
• Would like to be careful and consider security (edited)

• Discussion about UGC content security and moderation *
• Discussion about running this group under W3C for IP protection *
  Rick W

• Interested in integrating the work of this group into their platform
  Adam
• Hoping that this ABI can be general enough to apply to any 3D application
  Safari Monkey
• What is the intended scope of that?
  cdata
• Need to consider if that's feasible.
• Is it going to be like a general runtime for the metaverse or business logic for avatars? (edited)
  jeana
• What's the turnaround rate for this project? When can we expect the work?
  Adam
• Realistically up to 2 years
• But needs foundational layers to built up
  cdata
• Need to think about proprietary SDKs
• Encourage this group to experiment before consensus (with agreement from Lyuma)
  Adam
• Encourage people in this group to go experiment with other platforms and see what others have done in the past

• Discussion around meeting cadence *
  Possibly alternating meetings with a working session one week and a retrospective / high level overview / demo session meeting?
  People volunteering for giving presentations on other projects.

Vote on new meeting time 16:00 UTC (8:00 AM PST) passes 6-4

VOTE: Proposal to alternate substantive working group meetings with demo and knowledge sharing sessions on alternate weeks passes 9-0 with 2 abstentions