A new vision ... PM2

Project Metatopia Multiverse or PM2 is the name of this second generation project. 

30,000 ft. - The high level view.

 Create a 6 billion strong, free for all, peer to peer, wireless network, one visor at a time. This network has no owner, no fees, no backbone, or infrastructure to maintain. It is wholly owned, operated and controlled by the people. Sounds like an impossible dream? Tell that to the cell phone industry that is now working on load sharing over your phone to extend their bandwidth and connectivity. So no, it's not only possible but eventual, simple physics dictate that. So lets get a jump on this and beat them to the punch. If every VR visor was it's own WiFi repeater, then it could form what I'd call the Exo-Net. Parallel to the Internet and still able to make use of the cloud.

The visor does it all. Video, Audio, GPS, compass, and more allows all of the functionality of a cell phone. Cloud access allows presentation of applications in the virtual world. You can still run an instance of your favorite app within VR just as you would on a desktop. So no PCs are needed. It's all in the visor. I have a design we will be working on for a complete hands free haptics interface. I know, it's kind of an oxymoron. Sing up, and be accepted into the hardware group and you'll get it.

This new version is to be completely retooled. Where we were using MEME, which was a Forth interpreter, we will now be using Chuck Moore's latest arrayForth.  Our goal here is to port and reuse the original code base where possible. In parallel, a new companion project is to be undertaken. This will be a low-cost, lightweight VR visor built around Chucks latest Forth engine produced by GreenArrays. This is Chuck's€™s latest hardware development effort. I have had the great pleasure of working with these chips in their earliest form and I'm here to say that there's nothing out there like it. These are also must read sites.


The visor is to be built upon the newest Flexible OLED technology for it's resolution, color, low power, and transparency in Augmented Reality and Altered Reality applications. The graphics will be presented in full panoramic stereo video. We will have head tracking accelerometers and a geo magnetic compass. The FOLED can be made transparent and overlay Altered, or Augmented data. Full 3D sound will be presented to each user through advanced audio processing.
Encrypted compressed data streams provide real-time audio, video, and world data.

The new haptics will be developed upon the latest bio interfaces now being investigated at universities. New technology derived from the latest in psychoacoustics developments will add new dimensions to the entire VR experience. Some of our technology providers will be providing limited license to their technologies outside of the public domain. Regrettably this must be as we would otherwise not have access to some of these advancements. The general code base and principal technologies are always going to be public domain, some add-ons may not.  That being said, anyone working with these in the group will likely have to sign an NDA. I don't think this violates Source Forge's€™s rules, but I'm sure I'll be told if I am mistaken. Ideally all privileged info will be kept on the respective owner's€™ sites and linked to from the project as specified in the rules. Otherwise the libraries will be available on this site. But I digress...

The Multiverse will be a planet-based matrix that is open, and developed by the user base. Each user may define the physics of their own domain. They may host spaces with full security protocols. There are many more features planned and will be laid out fully in the developer sections.

Basic philosophy

The principal philosophy I am espousing here is one of simplicity and specificity. I have found that in developing code for over 20 years, and after having made serious use of Forth, that these are the principals that will lead to success.

My father used to say, " K.I.S.S. - Keep it simple stupid! "

If you've never programmed in Forth before, there are a couple prerequisites you'll need to study: Leo Brodie's Starting Forth, and on that page you'll find links to some other good resources including the Thinking Forth, also by Leo Brodie. If you search the net you will find many other resources.

This article by Jeff Fox is required reading if you want to participate in code development. I could go into length about what has been learned about the efficiencies of simplicity. I will lay these ideals out fully in the developer sections tailored to the tasks at hand. Be prepared to toss out a lot of what you knew regarding code structure and discipline. Not all of the work, obviously, will be Forth, but much of it will. I can, along with many other career programmers, testify to the lessons learned from using Forth. It is almost impossible to describe it properly, until you have seen code grow impossibly SMALLER, yes smaller, as it grows in intricacy. Trust me, at the very least it will forever change how you factor your code, and your thinking. Jeff is also maintaining a blog here about his work with the proposed array processor, it makes for  an interesting read. There is another wonderful article titled eForth and Zen by Dr. C.H. Ting that is very enlightening and worth the time.


Edited: 1/5/2010-gde