From: randy@xanadu.com (Randy Farmer -- A survivor of the Lost Patrol)
Subject: Re: Implementing a virtual world
Date: Thu, 7 Jun 90 14:27:55 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Jun7.142755.9456@xanadu.com>
Organization: Xanadu Operating Company, Palo Alto, CA


In article <1990Jun6.153725.6857@watmath.waterloo.edu> mwtilden@watmath.waterloo
.edu (M.W.Tilden, Hardware) writes:
>
 (some stuff saying how hackers have done great stuff 'cause it is FUN.)
>
>With VR, the problem is not that the machines aren't available after
>hours, but aren't available at all!  And, from what I can tell, the
>people who are working in the field are just sitting around banging
>their egos together while praying that what they spit out might gain a
>toehold on the market, thus spuring corperate sponsorship (You don't
>want to know what I think of corperate sponsorship of VR research.
>It's even nastier).

 Not ALL of us are just banging our egos together. When we are Lucasfilm
Chip Morningstar ad I (along with several others) put together the Habitat
system. A 2D, 3d person >>MULTI-PARTICIPANT<< virtual reality. It's making
money even though the frontend software on a Commode-Odor 64. ;D Corporate
sponsoship for this project was the ONLY way to do it, my best guess is that
over 7 figures were dropped into this project (with very little waste IMHO).

>
>I say this knowing that the sparks from my own ego are currently
>setting my desk-calender on fire.
>
>What is needed is a marketed absolute towards which everyone can work.

 Hear Hear! The hard part is deciding WHAT THAT IS!

> (suff deleted)
>
>The point is that if someone, somewhere would market and sell a
>standard VR device that was backwards compatible, it would break
>ground that would trickle down to the general user population.

 Ooops! Not so fast. :D. How about a VR software standard first! Hardware is
always going to change, and face it, Eyphones are JUST TWO SCREENS. A Dataglove
is JUST AN INPUT DEVICE. They are COOL I/O devices, and I want some, but that
is all they are. Our position is that the hardware is not the problem
of VR, the comm and data standards are. How do you handle interacting VRs
(from differenet vendors), etc.? Let's think about backward compatible
software first!

>Not just in software but also in imagination stimulus.  The device would be
>crude initially, but if done correctly, you could sell one everywhere
>(everywhere with about $200,000 to spend, of course.  Still far
>cheaper than a full flight simulator with almost 80% of the realism).
>

 The hardware for a Sens8 platform is around $10,000 (less if you already own
a fast 386 or say, a sun) and $3,000 less if you don't need a head tracker.
I'm not sure what the software is selling for tho.

>And, despite the horrors of such a statement, chances are that it
>should run MSDOS.
>

 Yer right! This is the right kind of question. (It is actually the answer to
the question: What platform should VR stuff run on today to encourage growth?)
Habitat already runs on an MSDOS platform in Japan.

> (comments about drop in  new hacker blood schools deleted)

>The other obvious problem is bandwidth.  Todays gridding of our
>planet with high-speed fiber-optics is inadequate for the 
>incredible quantities of data-flow that a full VR news service 
>should carry.  Compression and distribution standards notwithstanding.
>And without this sort of free exchange, VR will flounder for a long
>while.  We haven't even got a standard graphics-image exchange system
>that anybody can agree on.  How could we set up exchange for full
>animation demos?

 Woa! Bandwidth is a real problem, but not as bad as you think. Habitat
worked at 300BAUD! The key here is not to try to bite off more than is
resonable. Again, object based comm and data standards can go a long way
on this front. Stop thinking in polygons. Think in objects. I *KNOW* these
sound like brief and arbitrary statements, but the come from real life
experience.

 Please check out our paper in the Proceedings from the First Conference
on Cybersapce., a MIT press book due out this fall for a more detailed
reasoning.

> (lots of other stuff deleted. I wanted to address only the points above)

>Mark Tilden: _-_-_-__--__--_      /(glitch!)  M.F.C.F Hardware Design Lab.
>-_-___       |              \  /\/            U of Waterloo. Ont. Can, N2L-3G1
>     |__-_-_-|               \/               (519) - 885 - 1211 ext.2454,
>"MY OPINIONS, YOU HEAR!? MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! AH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

F. Randall Farmer
Mother of Habitat
randy@xanadu.com