From: ron@vicorp.com (Ron Peterson)
Subject: Re: Consumer Markets for VR
Date: 13 Dec 90 01:19:11 GMT
Organization: V. I. Corporation, Amherst, Massachusetts



In article <12789@milton.u.washington.edu> frerichs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David J Fr
erichs) writes:
>
>My question has to do with motivating the general consumers...
>I am looking for the Desktop Publishing of VR.  DTP was almost unheard of until
>someone thought of using a mac for it... now it is a mainstay of the industry.
>We need some similar idea for lowend VR.
>Virtual vactaions to real spots wouldn't be satifying on the first systems to
>come out.  Think of it this way.  Would you want to edit a 24bit color scan
>on a Mac Classic?  Not if you don't want it done half assed.
>The education idea is a good one, teach geometry, trig, volume integrations
>using VR.  You don't need alot of fine visual detail for those sorts of things.
>More ideas like that are what would seem to be appropriate.
>
I think that perhaps one of most profitable and exciting uses of VR could 
be in the creation of interactive movies.  A producer, director, artists
and set designers, "script" writers and others get together and create a
world and situation in which people can interact via a VR interface.
A person dialing into the [vroovie? voovie?] would be charged a flat or 
hourly rate according to the role they choose to play (the most common 
role being observer perhaps, at least initially to discover whether one 
wanted to join in or to study a part.)  The money could be collected 
using a 900 telephone number type method or through credit cards like 
on a bulletin board.  Proven actors, artists, designers, etc. might be 
paid instead of charged to encourage their participation (a new type of 
income producing work!)
  The design would be quite different from that of a movie and would
require some clever thinking since it would have to create an
interesting experience for potentially hundreds or thousands of
people who have no acting ability.  Initial attempts might resemble
vacation resorts in exotic places (go to mars where you can play 4D 
gravity ball or wander the jade and obsidian sculpture parks or meet
people in a syntha-bar or watch the laser battle against the natives
or go to the stadium to see the latest interactive work by that
great artist He's Zwell or...)  As the creative people begin to explore
the possibilities though, much more elaborate shows could be produced
that have a more tightly integrated plot or theme and which bring
unique experiences to the participants.  (I think horror "films" are
going to get REALLY scary! And SciFi is going to go out of this world!)
Knowing people I'm sure many would prefer to just watch (try asking 
someone to say something into a microphone) so there would have to be 
many aspects of it that would appeal to the person who wants to see 
but not participate.

I think something like this could be done today.  A master disk generated
that has the predesigned sets and interaction rules that is purchased
(or downloaded?) combined with a bulletin board approach to interactive
access and some simple hardware accessories for some popular computers.
All made idiot-proof (like, much more so than the mess that was made of
modem communication, right?)
We computer geeks are working on doing something like this right now
(all top secret/company proprietary of course) and I'll bet the first
ones start to emerge within a year after the secret high resolution
mode of the PowerGlove is reverse engineered. Maybe sooner.
I think it's time for some fun.  The 90's have been boring so far.
ron@vicorp.com