BIG UPDATE - Lots Of Progress Made On Prototype! :)
This post was originally published on the Our World blog on 3rd July 2019:
Greetings Friends,
I have not done a video update for Our World for sometime so this is a BIG UPDATE on where things currently stand... :)
Where to begin? I will attempt to summarise what I said in this video.
So basically after all these years I now have the website, blogs and social media presence I was aiming for with over 5.5K likes on FB, etc. I have over 2 years of blogs on the website (with a LOT more planned!). The website has been updated a number of times with more and more info on Our World. It needs updating again because this project is evolving and expanding all the time, as you can imagine! ;-)
I have been holding off really pushing the GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign until I had achieved the above and also had a prototype to show. With such a large project all of this has taken a lot of time. If I am honest I have been working mostly on my own over the years because the team listed on the website are all volunteers so they have full-time jobs and so can only offer limited support, this is why funding is really needed so we can all go full-time and help really accelerate things.
The good news is that the prototype is now taking shape after working on it for about a year on and off part-time. But at the beginning of May I took a big leap of faith and gave up my full-time job to go full-time on Our World FINALLY! :) Last year I worked on the Unity front-end building the 3D map, AR components, etc and this year since the beginning of May for 2 months I have been working on the back-end code. I have developed HoloNET, a .NET client to talk to Holochain where the central profile/avatar/karma system is stored. HoloNET will be Open Source and gifted forward to the amazing Holochain community where I hope it will attract Holochain developers to come and help with Our World as well as help me write a .NET HDK (Holochain Development Kit) so I can write my Holochain code in .NET/C# rather than Rust! This will help speed up development for the Holochain part of Our World/OASIS as well as open it up to a much bigger community of developers for both .NET and Unity.
I love Holochain and I am very excited and passionate about it and I KNOW it is the future but it is a very steep learning curve because you not only need to learn a whole new way of programming with the distributed and decentralised chain/DHT network, you also need to learn Rust, which is not very intuitive or easy to pick up. I have worked in a number of languages over the years and all were a lot easier to pick up and even read and understand what it was doing without having to learn the language. Rust is not like this and its very cryptic but I understand it is very powerful and best suited for Holochain so it was still the right design decision.
But this is where a .NET HDK would help us all have the best of both worlds where we can have the power, robustness & efficiency of Rust coupled with the much easier and accessible .NET/C#. I have created a dedicated channel on the Holochain chat boards along with a Open Source GitHub Repo where I am trying to gauge interest for:
Once I have developed the prototype a bit more I will start to look more closely at how a .NET HDK can be approached. The other reason it is best to hold off for the time being is because Holochain is still in Alptha with weekly releases so it is changing and evolving all the time so there is not much point creating a .NET HDK if it will need to be changed every week. Once the Holochain API has stabilised more then it's a good time to start the .NET HDK...
But I open to suggestions and feedback on this? If people feel like they would like to get involved in the HDK or with Our World I would love to hear from you! Thank you! :)
Right, tangent over, back to what I have been working on... I have also developed HoloOASIS, which is built on top of HoloNET and connects the client to the OASIS API Architecture I have also developed. This is where the central profile/avatar/karma system is managed and is the BLL (Business/App Logic Layer). HoloOASIS is a provider that implements the IOASISStorage interface within the OASIS API. This is how any storage/network provider can easily be plugged into the OASIS Architecture/Our World without any changes needing to be made. This follows the good SOLID design principles where everything is Extendable and Open. It will also use MEF (Managed Extensibility Framework) to allow the providers/modules to be hot swappable so the app/code does not even need to be re-compliled. The dll/module can just be dropped into a hot folder that the runtime will pickup on the next time it is restarted.
Now I am currently plugging the OASIS API into the Unity front-end I worked on last year. It will display the profile info stored in Holochain on the 3D Avatar screen and then also show that avatar on the world 3D map at your current location. Yes this is part of the replacement for Google Maps! ;-) But this is only the beginning... we are only just getting started... these are the fundamental building blocks and foundations we will be building on...
Finally, I have also been working and synergising with Chris from S7 Foundation to integrate ARC (Augmented Reality Computer) & Noomap (fractal 3D mapping & more!) into Unity and the OASIS Architecture/Our World. ARC is an operating system and is VERY exciting and ground-breaking, I cannot say more than this right now because Chris wants to keep this black ops for now, but when the time is right we will reveal this along with much more we have been working on in our secret underground bunker! ;-)
All of these pieces are impressive and game changing on their own but can you imagine the power they will have when fully integrated?! That moment is getting closer and closer everyday and everything really will change when it does... it could be as soon as next year... but that all depends on YOU and how much you value the important work we are doing?
If everyone donated just a £1 then we could transform and save the world right now! How much is saving the world worth to you? How much is your kids/grand kids future worth to you? Because if we do not turn things around then we will be the last generation.
So please do the right thing and do your part to help save the world! Be the hero of your own life story, you know you want to! ;-)
