The Teleportal: An interactive gateway of the Virtual Worlds Museum™

[music] Hello everyone and welcome to the 3:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. session of the 2025 Open Simulator Community Conference. In this session, we are pleased to introduce the presentation, the teleportal, an interactive gateway of the virtual worlds museum. Our speaker is Julian Reyes. Julian Reyes is the founder and director of the Virtual Worlds Museum, whose mission is to explore, preserve, and showcase the evolution of immersive worlds. In recognition of his contributions to the XR industry and digital preservation, Julian was awarded the ARA Impact Award 2025 alongside Lisa Edgar of Arrival Space. He has since been invited to serve as a juror for the ARA award 2026 and is a featured speaker at Immersive Effects. Julian's also held positions at Meta, Cisco Systems, and Exponent. Please check out the website found at conference.opensimulator.org org for speaker bios, details of sessions, and the full schedule of events. The session's being livereamed and recorded. So, if you have questions or comments during the session, you may send tweets to openCC with a hashtag OSCC25. Welcome everyone and let's begin the session. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak uh to Avacon and to the open simulator community conference. Uh it's uh very nice to be back again. I want to uh explain a little bit more about um the history of the virtual worlds museum. Um some of the resources and um research that went into creating it. um and also showcasing the teleportal which is um we're really excited to present. Um this all started with my desire to uh view the metaverse as a three-dimensional construct almost like a constellation of planets. Uh it never made any sense to me why in a spreadsheet or in a list, right? We're talking about three-dimensional entities. why not then be able to be viewed in 3D. So I did a talk at AWE uh two years ago and in that talk um I actually um focused on mapping immersive worlds and um all of that work led for me to actually uncover more and more of these platforms. Um so I was lucky enough to get a awesome team together of adviserss and volunteers and we were able to um begin our work of u cultural uh digital heritage and preservation of this digital worlds by um creating videos and creating uh events that celebrate um virtual worlds um culture. Uh one of the uh recent events that I hosted was with uh Richard Bartle uh who was the author of uh designing virtual worlds. He wrote this uh like 20 years ago and uh he then since has uh created another edition uh which uh just became uh live and he's that was volume one and he's actually doing volume two and with the help of the OMI group um I was able to start a GitHub page. So, if you were to um search Virtual Worlds Museum, you can see some of our initial research there. And what struck me in my in in all of my reading of Virtual Worlds is that there were others that came before me and I would call them like the predecessors of the work. U if you can see at the bottom left, uh Bruce Dmer was doing work on um avatars. He wrote a book called Avatars and he actually had a website that celebrated those first worlds in the '9s. Then the Library of Congress um created a uh research uh report uh with the help of Henry Lowwood of uh Stanford and I got to speak to Henry and uh he's giving us a lot of a lot of love for our work in um and uh Ryan Schultz I have to mention he was actually one of the uh main inspirations for some of the uh way to like understand these technologies and you Nick over at K0 uh out of the UK who was doing a lot of this research as well. So I wanted to make sure to mention them because their work uh precedes um our our research efforts. Um another organization I really to mention is the XR Guild. Um I'm part of this uh group of professionals that we are dedicated in um ethics and our mission is to support all the professionals that um um in making more uh ethical products through the networking because sometimes the big corporations and the big companies are so focused on ROI and market share that they don't lean into the ethics side of it. So what we do is we created a place for these professionals on their own time to come and volunteer at the Exark Guild and we've created a library where uh we've categorized 10 different topics in ethics and those include AI ethics, current peer-reviewed uh works, ethical responsibility uh we have a great link for XR industry news. So if you want to find out conferences like these or conferences in ethics that's where you will find neurochnology mind control and privacy physiological and psychological effects of privacy and policy and security and safety. So the XR guild's mission uh is really important as far as uh advancing um ethics in XR. So, I just want to make sure you guys um look into that if you haven't already and you can easily become a member. There's no charge uh but you can donate your time and join one of the tracks and I am the um co-lead for the library track but there events uh mentorship and so forth. To speak more about the virtual worlds museum, we um are focused on education, preservation and partnerships and showcasing virtual worlds. Um we've won a couple of awards and that we're very proud of and happy and honored because uh there really isn't uh there hasn't been an uh organization um that has had this type of uh reach in all of the different virtual worlds because you know most of the um platforms they're trying to uh make it in and and survive in such a competitive landscape and that's why I created this um organization that it's not really driven by selling of uh any products or is driven by ROI and it's really uh a work of uh of love and and and the people that have u contributed to it really uh kind of follows that ethos of preparing us for the future of the 3D web. Right? I at the beginning of the internet um at the very beginning you had like nine websites and then websites and then it went to millions of websites and I feel that we're at that juncture right we're at that juncture where uh AI prompted worlds and um other technologies will democratize the way that the everyday person can build worlds and then you won't have the the friction of uh you know no knowing Unity or Blender you can actually just um what my thesis is is like let's put a marker on the ground, catalog all of the different platforms that exist and prepare for the worlds of the future, prepare for um the the onslaught of the 3D web. Uh and I want to like make sure that we're um also being very careful and intentional about how we um hold these new platforms accountable. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of social media. Social media has brought us a lot of um negative aspects as well as some good ones. But if you look at the overall mechanism um I don't think people really understand the amount of control and misinformation. And I think that's one of the main reasons why we should kind of uh make sure and help guide the 3D um companies of the future, right? because these devices uh the moment that you put them on uh your HMDs, you know, they really uh track a lot more than just your computer uh footprint, right? There's a lot of more uh intimate um information um that we should u be aware of. Um another way that we catalog um virtual worlds is through creating hubs in all of the different platforms. We have an amazing hub at Roblox. That's actually the history of Roblox U museum. So you when you're in the experience, you can actually teleport into different mini worlds that show you the starter packs that Roblox used to create uh in those years. So it's almost like literally going through a time machine. And then we also have other museum hubs. Uh we just created an amazing space in RP1 and they're about to do a relaunch next week. So I would uh really watch out for them because they are um positioning themselves as the metaverse browser of the future and you're able to actually host your own server in your 3D worlds through RP1. Um we have a build in Horizon Worlds that I feel in the future if uh Meta works with us we would be able to utilize deep app linking to uh create interoperable portals and through my work with meta traversal and uh Evo Heining and Ben Irwin we have been testing this for uh many years which is actually traversing from world to world and we've already proven interoperable portals between uh engage VR into multiverse into Roblox VR all seamless. Uh and that's just proof that even though these wall gardens are very guarded, uh there are ways to be able to traverse with portal portaling. This is the crux the crux of our work is the um exhibit matrix that I created in order to organize u virtual worlds into seven different exhibits. Um the reason the last exhibit doesn't have a number is because it exists outside of our um mapping for the because these are worlds of the past. These are extinct worlds. Um but we have the most comprehensive and uh largest list of these worlds uh on the internet. Um, and we actually include their beginning year and their ending year. To further explain the our exhibit, the uh web XR and web exhibit, these are worlds that all you need is a browser in order to navigate. The VR and apps exhibits are all of your really popular worlds that you need to download something to your computer and to your device. The games worlds are all the game oriented platforms. The specialized exhibit is the bulk of our worlds uh which is your education worlds, your um corporate worlds, your meeting platforms, your kids, your training, your simulations and the open source exhibit. Uh we've actually has expanded it greatly with more research for the open simulator community. Before we had open simulator just as a platform, but what uh Steve Vanlon and myself have done is we've actually mapped uh over 120 different hyper grids. So the teleportal now includes ways to find uh these hyper grids. Um and the last one is the blockchain exhibit which was the most difficult to map. Uh but we actually went in and uh obtained wallets and went into all of these worlds to verify which are the ones that are valid uh for categorization. Um and with that I want to show you the teleportal. Keep in mind that all of the data that goes into this 3D force graph came from this categorization strategy. Right? And the beauty of it is that if a world becomes extinct then it's moved to the sunset exhibit. If it becomes blockchain and it moves to blockchain, it has the ability to be modular. So no, no matter where the world what happens to the world's technology, it's actually can be mapped. And of course, some worlds could fit into uh several categories, but this is just the best way that I found uh to be able to categorize the worlds and also to showcase them in three dimensions. And um with that, I want to show you the teleportal uh video and I will uh return right after you see it. And just understand that we're also doing an immersive version. So uh two-minute video. As previously mentioned, the virtual worlds exhibit platforms can be found in the teleportal. We have categorized all of the platforms into seven different exhibits. Web XR games, VR and apps, specialized, and so forth. The worlds are actually clickable, so you can go into the platform and navigate it easily. So, it's not only a map, but it's also a way to navigate the metaverse. With the help of Steven Vanlon, we have created the open sim worlds that you can navigate to and be able to find within the opensource exhibit. The teleportal allows you to move around and find different worlds. We have a search feature where you can type in the name of a world. All of the different platforms gray out and the colored platform is the one that you search and you can navigate to. Additionally, the teleportal features the virtual worlds museum as the middle node and all of the different exhibits that are connected to it. I will refresh and see the force graph materialize and show the different worlds. You can even go into web XR worlds with complete interoperability. So for example with Frame VR you navigate directly into the world and you are traversing through a virtual world automatically thus showcasing complete interoperability. We are building a immersive version in Unity and we also plan to transfer a version of this to the Apple Vision Pro. We welcome the support from this community to make the teleportal happen. This is version one and we're excited to work on version two with you and welcome your input. You can find us at virtual worlds.m museum. Thank you. Thank you so much. Uh yes if and it there is a live version of the teleportal on our website. So if you go to virtualorlds.mmuz so instead of.com or.org uh virtual worlds um museum you will see the teleportal and um also we have gathered a list of books uh about the metaverse. Uh we have panels and uh use cases. We have uh a lot of resources that um you can utilize to further your research. Um we also offer uh we also offer a uh sponsorship packages where if a sponsor helps us create the exhibit um I've uh want to offer not only name placement for the exhibit but uh what we want to do is create a subworld with the timeline of the company's history. So any sponsor that works with us will actually have a world developed by the virtual worlds museum and we are open for uh volunteers to come be a part of our work. U a lot of the future research is around uh being able to preserve these worlds with AI because with uh images and videos we can um utilize generative AI to create either sky that people can um visit and that's another way for us to uh lean on the ethical practices of AI. We don't want to um utilize the new technology uh very frivolously. Uh we are also very focused on an AI agent creating a dosent. So when you come into the virtual worlds museum you would have an agent that explains to you everything about the different virtual worlds and um we we're continuing to build in different platforms and when the teleportal is immersive it will be in the metaquest. Uh we're working on an Apple Vision Pro version and a web app. So, thank you very much for uh your time and uh we welcome any contributors and volunteers to come work with us. It has been a pleasure to share more of our work and I look forward to continuing to help map the uh open simulator community in the teleportal in the best way possible. So, we're always looking for collaboration and thanks again. >> Thank you, Julian Reyes, for an informative and interesting presentation. As a reminder to our audience, you will want to check out conference.opensimulator.org to see what is coming up on the conference schedule. You won't want to miss our next session that'll begin at 4:00 p.m. in this keynote region entitled Amplifying Medical Lab Voices celebrating 50th anniversary for ASCP certification in medical laboratory science. Also, we encourage you to visit the OCC 25 poster expo in the OCC Expo 3 region to find accompanying information on presentations and explore the hyper grid tour resources in OCC Expo 2 region along with sponsor and crowdfunder booths located throughout all of the OCC Expo regions. Thank you again to our speakers and our audience.