From: pepke@SCRI1.SCRI.FSU.EDU (Eric Pepke)
Subject: Re: VR and the handicapped
Date: 26 Oct 90 14:34:38 GMT
Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them


In article <9961@milton.u.washington.edu> esdvt@esdvt.esd.sgi.com (ESD 
DVT) writes:
>     Why wouldn't people who are visually handicapped just have the
>  dead nerves or whatever was failing bypassed by hardware so they
> could "see"

There has been some work along these lines, but there are some 
difficulties.  One is that vision requires come brain development which 
can only occur at an early age and can only occur in response to visual 
stimuli.  There have been cases where people blind from birth were given 
operations to give them sight, but they lacked the cognitive facilities to 
make sense out of the data, which came across as distracting noise.  For 
others, bypasses should eventually be possible, but I think that by then 
one of two things (or both) will be true: implantable prostheses will make 
these people no longer blind, or the neural connections will be the stuff 
of virtual reality.  The former is more likely; the latter is more 
romantic.

However, I don't think the idea that VR must neccessarily exclude the 
disabled (at least any more than normal reality does) is accurate.  The 
VPL setup has a pair of stereo headphones and a processor which models the 
filtering of the ear and head to do binaural sound.  It's still quit 
primitive (less so than the graphics, though) but it is amazingly 
effective.  Anybody who has heard a good binaural recording, such as in 
the sound booths at Disney/MGM studios, knows that it can convey a 
tremendous amount of spatial information.

A good field of research might be the investigation of audio "glyphs."  A 
glyph is a graphical object which simultaneously conveys more than one 
piece of information.  An audio glyph might be a burst of sound which does 
the same thing.  Audio glyphs might be realistic or purely symbolic.  For 
example, imagine a virtual reality of a library of world history.  The WWI 
section might be a burst of a scratchy recording of "Over There."  The 
WWII section might be a couple of clunks of marching feet from some Nazi 
propaganda film.  Vietnam would be the sound of helicopters.  Asian, 
African, European history and subsections thereof might be snatches of 
characteristic music from the areas.

(Nostalgic note--I once wrote a deranged little game for the TRS-80 called 
"Find the Plutonium."  There was nothing on the screen at all, just an 
occasional ticking from the "geiger counter." Based on the frequency of 
the ticking, you had to find your way to the plutonium.)

Eric Pepke                                    INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET:   pepke@fsu
Florida State University                      SPAN:     scri::pepke
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052                    BITNET:   pepke@fsu

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