Large numbers of geographically distant users interact in real time.
Users communicate with each other using natural spoken language.
3D graphics and sound. Users experience a 3D graphical world with localized stereo sound. Middleware is usually invisible to the end user, but is crucial to the application programmer because it dramatically reduces the amount of code that needs to be written. Bill Lambert, director of HSL, is now leading the Spline project. We are working with other companies to develop an open standard, called Open Community, based on the core technologies in Spline.