Open Source Integration

After paying $19 a year to participate in a cyberspace building community experiment that took off in a nice critical-mass curve, I decided I'd wait for an open source graphics-engine to be incorporated into a platform I could help extend in a similar manner. Seems there is a common pattern out there for properly integrating other open source components into a scene-graph based graphics engine.

If only we could move ahead and get academic departments all over the world working on the same grand vision. We'd not only have a platform for connecting in cyberspace, we'd have a place to try out interesting algorithms, play interesting games, interact with interesting data, and do some important research as to how these cyberspace platforms could be used more effectively. Seems Rensselaer Polytechnic is building a video games major (I read it in the alumni magazine). Certainly part of such a degree should be spent developing the underlying environment on which games can be rolled out en masse. Who else is going to follow suit? How long is it going to take to get this going (and having the different students from different universities participate in one massive project?

Some sixth entry links:

activeworlds: home page
digital spaces: home page
ogre: home page
cegui: home page
openal: home page