---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: [email protected] (Marc de Groot - KG6KF)
Subject: Meme
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 22 Jun 94 11:26:25 PDT
Hello. It's about time I introduced myself. I'm Marc de Groot, the founder
of Immersive Systems, Inc. in San Francisco.
I started ISI to sell Meme, which is a virtual world development
system. Meme is intended to create a single shared virtual universe on
the net.
ISI released the alpha version of Meme last month.
Meme stands for Multitasking Extensible Messaging Environment. Meme started
life as a programming language. Some "OS-level services" were added to the
system, and finally the messaging mechanism was added to allow virtual objects
to communicate. At this point, Meme is evolving into a communications
protocol.
I heartily agree with the statements that have been made on this mailing
list about net software: make something proprietary, and the net hackers will
write a free replacement which everyone will use.
I intended to make the protocol public later this year, after ISI had fulfilled
higher priority obligations, however the establishment of this list has
prompted me to put some preliminary information on the net at this time.
I have put up a WWW page for Immersive Systems. The URL is
http://remarque.berkeley.edu/~marc/home.html
>From the home page, you can read an overview of Meme, look at the programming
manual, and download a demo world to try on your own PC.
Meme has certain features that I would want to see in any specification for
VRML. In particular, Meme allows the world designer to specify platform-
independent executable code for the object's behavior. Without this
ability, objects have relatively rigid, uninteresting behavior.
That platform-independent code needs to load over the net with a minimum
of overhead, and needs to execute efficiently. Meme satisfies both of
these requirements.
That completes my thoughts for now. I will post in the future, as time
permits.
Marc de Groot
Immersive Systems, Inc.
[email protected]