From: Will Overington <esz001@cck.coventry.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: The COMET Environment (LONG)
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 91 10:08:50 -0100



Actually, I was thinking last night, and have come in this morning with
the intention, of actually trying to get something going along the lines
of a Teleutopia Of Virtual Reality Objects and working out how I should do
it.

My initial thoughts are for triple coordinates from 0 to 999999999 in
each direction, that is, a nice round number of points compatible with
easy, don't worry about a sign bit, numbers that can fit within a 32
bit word; in particular within a pascal longint type. This huge data
size will enable one to build up detailed objects by scaling and adding.
For example, a renaissance villa could have fancy column capitals added
onto the top of each column by scaling down a design for a column capital
and adding in copies translated to various locations, and so on.

In my research projects on the restructuring of knowledge bases I have
devised a system whereby software and data can be entwined together
by using a language based on a language (alcor) that I designed a few
years ago, which was itself based on forth.

The method is that each software word starts with a triple letter,
for example zzzif   zzzthen   zzzelseif and so on.
The zzz words are fixed in the language, but fff words are user defined
for fields within a relational database structure, for example fffquantity.
This means that field lengths do not need to be fixed.

I have it in mind to extend this concept for the files for the objects,
using vvv as the triple key and words like vvvx vvvy vvvz and so on.
This will give scope for files to be built that could be treated almost
as data files by fairly simple software, yet be obeyed by something a bit
more powerful. For example, commands such as vvvfill and so on,
whatever that is defined as meaning when I think it out fully. :-)

Incidentally, while writing, can I mention a few other points.
I have not read all of each of the items, but on the matter of floating
point numbers being needed or used for rotating objects in space, I was
reminded that a lot of early forth stuff avoided floating point operations
and instead preferred to do things like integer multiply by an integer and
then integer divide by some large number. Could this be an approach for
virtual reality systems, bearing in mind that eventually one needs to
end up with integers in order to light up pixels, no matter how detailed
a display system one has available. Perhaps things like taking care to
avoid accumulating rounding errors need to be taken into account, whether
using integers or floating point, for example, if one rotates 40 degrees
and then wishes to rotate 25 degrees further on, maybe one should go back
to the original and rotate that 65 degrees, rather than rotating the
already rotated design a further 25 degrees.

I am hoping that, if I can get this teleutopia going, then it will attract
not only everyday objects but also will be treated as a medium for
original art. There could be designing something on paper and putting it
into the required format, but there could also be the concept of the
person who wrote in sci.virtual-worlds of working using a helmet to create
an object in some virtual material. Did that person suggest, or did I
imagine, this as a sort of fluorescent green weightless clay. I am
wondering, should someone be able to create a piece of art in this way,
how it could be saved into a machine readable form so that it could be sent
over the net and someone elsewhere be able to have a copy of the art object.

Will Overington

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Putting forward new ideas is like being a quarterback.
First of all you will loose a few yards by even starting the play.
Then there will be people trying to put you down.
Sometimes it's best to hand the football to someone who is better at running,
sometimes it's best to forward pass in a controlled, planned way,
but at times, the only thing to do is just hurl it up in the air in a long
forward pass attempt, and hope that someone out there catches it and RUNS!
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