What might a Business Value Proposition look like?

Having worked in developing such BVPs in the past, one of the first thing I try to craft is how such a capability might be "sold" to an interested audience.

As most other technology capabilities, Virtual Worlds such as OpenSim (and Second Life, RealXtend, MetaVerse and other variants), have various "sellable features" that might be interesting to Corporate America. Facing an protracted economic downturn, US Companies are currently working to reduce costs and streamline their operations. US DoD might be seen as having similar goals. Games don't care about such trivialities and instead want an action-packed, highly experiential game. Game developers care about realism, environment such as physics and flawless execution. Educators want to reach out and deliver content to their audience.

This post explores some thoughts divided in verticals and/or interest groups with my self-assessed knowledge/experience level following each vertical.

Gamers (Little knowledge, little interest)
If World of Warcraft could be seen as the "future state" of games, then Virtual Worlds appear to be generally lacking. The only product that appears to be intend to satisfy such demanding requirements might be open source Wonderland.

Multi-person Role Playing (Little knowledge, little interest)
A form of game where interactions are with other avatars and the other avatars are controlled by someone else.

Single or small-team Role Playing (Little knowledge, high interest)
Generally, this simply brings people together for the purposes of a shared experience.

Mirror Worlds (Little knowledge, high interest)
This vertical aligns best with my thoughts. Building a Mirror World requires as high-degree as required capability of duplicating a Real World in a Virtual World. Mirror Worlds can be best understood as an immersive environment so that the avatar interacts with their surroundings and those surroundings look very much like what the person would see if they were in that same situation. Darb Darby and others have mapped out how to import terrain into a sim. Darb has done some thoughtwork that MWs can be expressed in the degree of realism e.g. terrian 2d or 3d? buildings 2d or 3d? Other thoughts include uploading Google Sketchup mesh into the VW and painting an avatar with a photorealistic face, body, etc. See this post for more details.
Loading a VW in a deliberate manner is important. See this post and this post for more details.

Social Interaction (Little knowledge, little interest)
This vertical aligns with what has been done with VWs up to this point. Second Life is a good example avatars teleporting from world to world. Interactions of several types appear to be supported.

Small Business (Mediocre knowledge, medium interest)
For this vertical, one primary motivation is developing a huge, repeated customer base. The only current VW that has such a large involvement by many, many users is Second Life.
The State of Vermont has recently decided to provide tax incentives to companies that wish to establish themselves in a VW and pay Vermont sales tax. There are a couple of applications that may be very interesting including: home walk-throughs as a precursor to buying, trying on clothing, hair styles, visualizing oneself in a car.

US Department of Defense (Mediocre knowledge, high interest)
The DoD might have interest in VWs as immersive environments that could provide war-fighters with a near-real environment to hone their skills. I don't believe that any product currently satisfying the requirements including: as near-real-time as required, as realistic as required, multiple actors with many, many possible interactions. Also required is likely as realistic a physics engine supporting earth-bound, water-bound and sky-bound physics.

Municipal Governments (Little knowledge, medium interest)
There seems to be much opportunity for municipal goverments as they begin to build VWs for specific purposes. See Darb Darby's well-reasoned ideas in Immersive 3d Simulator-based GIS. Sharing the 3d experience.

Average Joe (Significant knowledge, little interest)
Currently, VWs require a thick-client to be installed on their computer. There are well-established (and, I believe compelling) reasons to move away from such an approach. Providing a browser-based capability appears to be out of the reach of VWs at the moment. Until such a capability is delivered, it is hard to see VWs as fulfilling such global needs. There are some applications that are obvious such as delivering navigation to a cell phone where the viewer is actually immersed in the current situation.

Highly Dangerous Careers (Mediocre knowledge, high interest)
This vertical is perhaps the most interesting as I believe this BVP is the most straight-forward. Consider, for example, what I've formulated as being a typical scenario for this group - firefighting. I can imagine deploying robots to fight mountain fires with firemen staying safely behind the fireline. Two sets of robots - the forward set capable of withstanding extreme temperature variations and equipped with laser-guided sights and perhaps a hovering capability could be used to identify high-value targets, gather evidence, etc. The rear set of robots might be charged with carrying the water hose. These robots would likely be ground-based but mobile and capable of delivering the water stream as directed by the out-of-harms-way firefighters. The firefighters might even be deployed in a warehouse equipped with imagery that provides the firemen situational awareness. Various effects could be simulated including: wind speed and direction, temperature, terrain, etc. The firefighters could literally be immersed in the firefight and simply be responding to what they sense. All, in complete safely. Meanwhile, the robot army would respond to the firefighters commands.

Education (Little knowledge, little interest)
Distance learning has become almost a buzz-word these days with more and more content being delivered as a hybrid of in-classroom, out-of-classroom, media-based and other forms. As a partially immersive VW, delivering course content may be a perfect scenario. Adding in voice discussions and various whiteboarding capabilities, Education may be effectively delivered via VW.