I can’t tell if Google has any inkling of the concepts presented here, but certainly an engine will be needed to power a virtual world that represents the real world in real time.
SpatialOS looks like the first engine that is not purely for games that could do the heavy lifting. Thankfully engines can come and go – all that needs to be right from the beginning is the data and the format. New engines can do more and different things with the data.
So what I’d like to see is a specification that has enough breadth to cover all the future potentials for a 3D virtual copy of the real world, and all the beings and devices that operate within it.
At this point in time, it looks like Google only sees it as a gaming platform…
A SpatialOS world can contain millions of persistent entities and manage their state and history. Design gameplay that allows players to affect the world in meaningful, long-lasting ways.