MetaMoon 

What Is It?

A 3D, immersive, online, massively multiplayer virtual recreation of the earth's moon. Implemented with:

• open source framework (server and client open source, most likely using something like Croquet).
• with a distributed architecture (anyone can host content for this environment, though the main content would mostly be expected to be NASA, maybe yahoo!?)
• with extensible, user-generated content, potentially implementing the notion of different conceptual "layers" which can be enabled/disabled, for example, a "science" layer might display all datasets uploaded by users; a "virtual settlements" layer might display all virtual settlements created by users, and a "fantasy" layer might enable users to explore content or activities outside the realms of physics. 
• the ability for users to develop and contribute their modules/extensions to the capabilities of the environment itself (cf. data analysis tools, for example)

Goals

• create a vitual environment that is facilitates our familiarity with, understanding, and continued exploration of, another planetary body (the moon). specifically,
  • raise awareness and understanding of the moon and space exploration
  • enhance scientific and engineering planning (pre-mission), mission support (on-mission), and post-mission (data analysis) activities.
• proof of concept demonstration of virtual environments as sophisticated scientific visualization and analysis environments
• advance state of the art in extensible online 3D immersive environments, in particular with respect to data analysis capabilities, in-world toolsets, and open architectures
• help to make science as an activity more intuitive, fun and accessible. 

Context (where did this come from/what's the motivation)

NASA's CoLab project has been working on efforts to make space exploration more "participatory", more hands on, and more accessible (from the policy through to the technology and science). NASA CoLab island in Second Life was NASA's first foray into virtual environments, and has met with resounding support and enthusiasm. CoLab island has been highlighted on MSNBC, Wired, O'Reilly Radar, and has built a large community of active contributors -- people who build projects or content, or use the island to enhance collaboration on space-related projects. It has also been a suprising success with respect to inter-center collaboration. CoLab has participants from NASA Goddard, JSC, KSC, Ames, and JPL.

However, the excitement around CoLab island has largely been around the promise that virtual environments will allow people the opportunity to directly participate in space missions, and to make space more directly accessible to them. Second Life (the most widely adopted virtual environment today) doesnt (currently) provide sophisticated scientific data visualization tools, has poor dataset import/export capability, high overhead for working with remote datasets, a centralized and closed-source server architecture (thus limiting extensibility), and limited support for detailed terrain maps of the kind we would need for a virtual moon.

If NASA is to realize the sentiment that virtual worlds enable us to "all go to space", we need a virtual environment that will support all these capabilities, and that will at its core welcome and support participation from an unrestricted audience.

Implementation

Assuming we start from an existing platform such as one of the ones below, the bulk of the work associated with this project would be expected to be

• creation of the terrain/lunar environment
• implementation/integration of an appopriately sophisticated physics engine
• data import/export, analysis, and visualization capabilities (the toolsets to interact with/manipulate the information and environment).
• ability for users to create content.

First Order Implementation

• A first order implementation might have the following components
• lunar terrain from existing datasets
• ability to conduct basic analytical tasks (display different overlays, conduct basic mathematical operations on the data points making up the terrain overlays. for example, extrapolating the height delta between two points, or visualizing the effects of basic changes in the datasets such as scaling up of radiation or the ability to "sample" the soil based on what we know today).

Later versions would include user-generated content, layers, an API, and more sophisticated mathematical operations and visualization capabilities.

Possible Platforms for Implementation

Croquet

• networking
• chat
• smalltalk (ik)
• more of an SDK
• cross platform 

M.U.P.P.E.T.S

• java and c#
• more focused on the science/physics and visualization side
• networking support? (not clear)
• windows :( :(
•  

Second Life

• not open source, but supposedly the plan is to release the server too "soon".
• massive user-base
• sophisticated general environment
• relatively undeveloped scientific visualization and analysis capabilities

Challenges/Questions

if second life really does open source their server software, then we need to ask the question if it makes more sense to work with what we can within second life right now, with the expectation that once the server is open sourced, the key criteria of extensibiloity, distributed architecture, etc. will all be met-- and we'll still keep the user base and familiarity, and be able to add key capabilities we intend to add to any implementation.

the challenge is that there's truly no indication of WHEN this will happen. it's essentially a gamble about adoption and staying power, and what will become a standard. on the other hand, we need to expect that a project like this will go through many iterations, and cannot let ourselves be paralyzed by trying to guess the future. 

give this, it might make more sense to just go ahead with a platform like croquet that is ready NOW for this kind of development, and port it if/when the time is right to other platforms.

thoughts?

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