Content Injection and Control Protocol allows applications to place interactive content into virtual worlds. By providing a standard, cross-platform way for external entities to interact with users inside a virtual 4d spacetime, CICP promotes software innovation. Here are some of the benefits:

• proprietary, closed-source software can participate in open-source virtual worlds
• the same version of an application can be used within multiple virtual world platforms
• application intelligence resides outside the world; only temporary, spontaneously-generated content lives in the world
• the complexities of in-world scripting and programming are handled by the protocol
• leverages HTTP
• takes advantage of virtual worlds with distributed architectures by transmitting data directly to the clients
• supports fully interactive content which is essentially the "avatar" of some external program
• automatically adjusts for lag when streaming content updates

CICP is HTTP for virtual worlds. We've implemented CICP for Sun Wonderland, and released it under the GPL. We've implemented it in Second Life with the help of a Java servlet and released it under a BSD license. We are working on an OpenSimulator implementation, as well as implementations for the leading commercial virtual world platforms. The original CICP spec and Second Life CICP script can be found here. We filed a provisional patent application which covers CICP but allowed it to lapse on March 14th, 2009; instead of pursuing a patent we published the provisional app to provide prior art protection for both CICP and MXP, a revolutionary virtual worlds protocol architected from first principles.

Why did we create CICP? We created it so that our data visualization gateway could work with multiple virtual world platforms. We hope that CICP will also be useful to developers of artificial intelligence services, architectural model gateways to virtual worlds, process modelling systems, and any other application which benefits from the rich collaborative environment that a virtual world offers.

CICP Source and Spec Home: CICP is an open project hosted on Googlecode.

Metaverse eXchange Protocol: MXP takes the CICP principles to the next level!

Project Wonderland: Toolkit for Building 3D Virtual Worlds.

realXtend: Creating an open source platform for interconnected virtual worlds is the goal of the realXtend project.

OpenSimulator: Creating the open metaverse.

Forterra: The leader in private, enterprise-level virtual world technology.

VastPark: Open Virtual Worlds Platform.