Ghost spiders and zombie avatars of the Metaverse

You know about spiders for the Web. When VR sites are added to the Metaverse, their owners will want search engines to spider them. The Metaverse is essentially a VR site plus avatars. Users wear avatars while in the sites. A spider can have an avatar, perhaps a 3d cartoon spider? An alternative is where the spider does not use an avatar. A ghost spider. Whether a room will permit visitors who do not have an avatar depends on the site. But the site will want to be searched, so that it ends up in Web statistics.

Detecting zombie avatars

A zombie avatar starts off as an avatar controlled by a human. She moves the avatar to a Metaverse site. Then she leaves it?! Without active control, the avatar stands still. A zombie. The user makes another avatar and comes back to the site with it. Now the early Metaverse sites are seeing zombies. There is no incentive for them to attack the problem, because they want users. If you wear an avatar and go to the site, you can be fooled by how apparently popular the site is. But if you try to interact with a zombie, nothing happens. At least it does not try to eat you, like a real zombie!

The spider builds a list of zombies. When a user enters the site, she has the spider mod her HUD. When she scans the room, if her FoV has zombies, the spider marks these in her view, so she can avoid them.

The Figure below shows what a user sees thru her HUD. She is in a site with 7 avatars. Her HUD is connected to the spider, which…