San Jose: The hottest discussion on the second and final day of the Virtual Worlds Conference here involved the founders of several virtual worlds debating where the platforms would go next.

The “Visionary Panel” comprised Raph Koster, president of Areae and founder of Metaplace.com, Hui Xu, founder of China’s HiPiHi and (left to right in the photo) Michael Wilson, chief executive of Makena Technologies (There.com), Stephen Lawler, general manager of Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, Chris Klaus, founder of Kaneva and Corey Bridges, co-founder of the Multiverse Network.

Corey Bridges predicted web integration would be a near-term growth area for virtual worlds, including integration with existing social networks such as Facebook.

"[Social networking] will really propel virtual worlds into the mainstream, that’s going to be the killer app, it’s been video games driving it up to now," he said.

Michael Wilson disagreed: "We are looking at gaming, I don’t think virtual worlds are going to be that different from games," he said.

Microsoft’s Stephen Lawler demonstrated how Microsoft had added 3D to its maps.live.com’s photo representations of 150 cities, zooming in on San Jose. Wilson said he could imagine a TV news channel recreating a bank raid in San Jose using the technology, although bloggers would come up with their own different versions of what happened first.

"The web is going 3D," said Lawler, "It’s going to be a really exciting transition over the next decade."

Areae’s Koster disagreed violently: "3D is a red herring," he said."Shopping on Amazon in 3D will suck."

He argued we were heading for a "representation-agnostic" web, where information would be presented in a way that best suited the user’s needs and the device they were using - such as providing turn-by-turn driving directions in text on a mobile phone’s screen, rather than showing a 3D map. The most successful virtual worlds, such as Neopets and Club Penguin, were flat 2D experiences, he pointed out.

Lawler responded that retail experiences could be improved by 3D - such as grocery shopping down 3D aisles rather than having to choose from lists in the current web iteration.

"Interiors are best represented in 3D - there’s no 2D representation that could� capture this [conference] room [with its audience]."

2D was fine for views from a distance, such as a satellite map, but as you zoomed in to a building or a corridor, 3D was the better form, he said.