I don't usually bother with even reading vision statements, and I'm a compulsive speed reader. Before I know I should not be reading something, it's too late, already read it. lol SledjHamr is my life's passion though, I've been interested in this sort of thing since the '80s and '90s. I've been thinking about how best to describe it, and it's turning into a sort of vision statement. So here it is. I'll try to avoid being too hand wavy and wanky. The main goal of the rest of my life is to help make 3D virtual worlds as easy to use and as useful as possible for everybody. How's that for a wanky motherhood statement? I haz a dreamz. B-) The entire system is designed to be easy, mashable, modular, and low on resource usage. The default package ties it all together into a newbie friendly first experience, that can be ignored easily by non newbies. All users should be able to easily learn how to at least re-arrange their furniture, change the wallpaper, and switch their outfits. More advanced users will find easy tools for in world building and scripting. Experts can easily peek under the hood, and squeal with glee at the virtual world construction set they find. Coders like myself can delve further into the quantum, but still using the built in tools. Sysadmins can easily integrate bits into their systems. People that enjoy mashups can go nuts. Initial experience. ------------------- You download SledjHamr from the Internet, and run it. You are in a 3D first person view, perhaps using a head mounted display. First things you see are a school desk, clothing rack, and wall full of landscapes. You are greeted by name, the name you used to log onto your desktop. You are informed that you have three choices, click on the desk to learn how to work this thing (though the basics, like clicking on the desk, should be obvious), the rack to sort out what you want to look like, or one of the landscapes to pick your first home. When you click on a landscape, it appears around you. You can explore it, modify it, or tear it all down and build your own. Eventually you might want to wander further, or invite some friends to your new home. You install a bus stop next to your home, wander over to it, look at the destination guide, and HyperGrid elsewhere as if you where on a normal OpenSim grid, using a normal OpenSim viewer. You unlock your home, and allow some of your friends to visit. Or (if you feel your security is up to it) you can open your home to the public, and let any one in. More details. ------------- 3D monitors / TVs, caves, Google Cardboard (with things like TrinusVR), and other things should also work. As should all manner of input devices, mapable by the user, but with sensible defaults. The basic look and feel will be similar to Second Life and OpenSim, at least to start with. Though I guess I should add in some graphic example of "WOW, SL can't do this" in the beginning. Which may happen by accident anyway. B-) I assume you are running it under some sort of desktop, though phone support is expected as well. The basic idea is that in most cases, the user has already authenticated themselves somewhere in order to get as far as actually being able to run SledgHamr. The default for the major desktop OSes is for the user to have created an account at OS installation time, even if it's "user" and "password" setup by store techs building white boxen. Corporate computers are usually locked down to staff accounts only. Smart phones usually have you logged onto their mothership for spying purposes, er I mean to help the user with all sorts of useful services. So no need for the user of SledjHamr to muck around with creating an account, you are already using it. They should be able to change their name though. I know, display names, yuck. I'm thinking you might be stuck in first person view until you pick out an avatar, or just pick something random. Your default home could also be a random selection. There could be theme packs to download, let you decide these things. Experts could just load up any IARs / OARs they have and skip the newbie experience. The HyperGrid protocol of OpenSim checks with the grid you logged into to see if you have a legitimate account. Well, you do, as I pointed out above. So visiting any OpenSim grid that allows HyperGrid will let you teleport to them from your SledjHamr home. When you open your home, the people can be coming from an OpenSim grid using the HyperGrid protocol, or another SledjHamr. SledjHamr should default to NOT opening up to the outside. The default status of your home will be "Locked up tight for the night." You are not going out, no one else is coming in. It will only open up when you decide to open up, and only as much as you ask for. Your home is your castle, or your bosses if you are using a corporate computer. Other virtual world protocols will be supported, the SL / OS ones will be just a wrapper around the SledjHamr protocol. For direct SledjHamr to SledjHamr things should be noticeably faster and smoother. Obviously any particular protocol will be limited by that protocols own limits.