We’ve open sourced our Connected Spaces Platform: Anyone can contribute. Everyone can benefit.
At Magnopus, our mission has always been to bridge the gap between our divided worlds and merge physical and digital to create extraordinary experiences. Today, we’re announcing a big milestone in our journey: we’ve open sourced our Connected Spaces Platform (CSP). Our hope is that other people on a journey similar to us can benefit from the work we’ve done to facilitate the interoperability of experiences connected across physical and digital spaces.
We’ve been working on this technology for over five years, at times with more than 60 people, and have gone through rounds of testing on public experiences and private betas with developers. This effort was recognized in TIME’s Best Inventions 2022 and now we’re excited to be releasing it to the community.
Connected Spaces Platform is free-to-use under the Apache 2.0 license. It facilitates the development of interoperable spatial applications – meaning the same experience can be accessible across different devices, through different technologies, and even across physical and digital spaces.
Why’s that important?
Because making cross-reality, cross platform experiences is just too damn hard.
Because companies trying to make immersive experiences shouldn't have to spend half their resources on technology to reproduce basic interoperability if they want to grow their audience beyond a single platform or device.
Because users of the next internet should expect experiences to work across multiple technologies in harmony so they can connect with their friends regardless of what devices they’ve got, the same way web pages of today’s internet work.
Currently, the user experience and standards for the spatial internet are being actively developed by just a handful of the world’s largest tech companies. Even though they’re making great progress in demonstrating what the future holds, developer communities believe that fostering this kind of significant change to the baseline experience requires accessibility and interoperability. We are supporting the vision of organizations like the Metaverse Standards Forum, and W3C by open-sourcing the Connected Spaces technologies we’ve been using.
By making this available under a royalty-free permissive free software license, we’re helping lay the foundations for a more diverse spatial internet that communities can build on together.
Key Features of the Connected Spaces Platform include support for:
Cross-reality experiences
Cross-platform interactivity and consistency
Wide range of supported engines (Unreal, PlayCanvas, Unity) and devices
Social interactions and presence in shared spaces (avatars, video, audio, chat)
Spatial anchoring
Extensible multiplayer network architecture
Secure collaboration and tool support in real-time
Built-in user account management features
Single-sign-on
If you’re reading this and keen to get your hands on the code, CSP can be accessed via GitHub.com. From there, developers can obtain and contribute to the libraries and code to build 3D applications that can communicate fluently to each other, across several popular programming languages and game engines.
Once a space is created using the framework, and connected to the necessary cloud services, it can be shared with people anywhere, across devices and platforms, whether they’re on a laptop, phone, or spatial computing device like a VR or AR headset. These spaces are multi-user, persistent, and can exist in physical worlds, virtual worlds, or anywhere in between.
Companies are already using the Connected Spaces Platform to expedite the creation and development of XR products and services. For example, IMxr is actively developing a pipeline and workflow that can utilize the technology to create a product that streamlines the presentation of buildings and housing to customers, enabling an effortless, interactive, and collaborative experience through multiplayer functionality.
To kick-start your imagination, here are some possible use cases:
A museum or science center could bring physical exhibits to life by adding digital layers of content that speak uniquely to various ages, nationalities, and interest groups. The same exhibits could be made accessible to visitors both on and off-site.
A concert, conference, or exhibition could enhance a physical venue with an experiential or operational digital overlay, allowing on-site fans to access additional content, performers, or presenters through their phones. Remote attendees could experience the same via a digital twin accessed through the web or applications.
Businesses could create a 3D space that embodies their brand, from a traditional storefront to a fantastical world, with or without a physical space as a foundation.
Connected Spaces are multi-user, persistent, and can exist in physical worlds, virtual worlds, or anywhere in between
We’re making our efforts open source because we want to encourage others to invent and create freely with a vision for an open and interoperable spatial web. We’ll keep contributing to the Connected Spaces Platform as it continues to evolve into its best version through engagement with the developer community. We’re truly excited to see how others use the technology.
