From: "Sean R Owens" Subject: Re: synthetic reality Date: 3 Feb 91 07:47:35 GMT Organization: The Zets In article <15274@milton.u.washington.edu> rick@hanauma.Stanford.EDU (Richard Ot tolini) writes: >There have been a number of names for the subject area of this newsgroup >appearing in this newsgroup including: > virtual-worlds > virtual-reality (VPL's trademark) Is "Virtual Reality" really a VPL trademark? When did they trademark it? Is this anything like Autodesk's trademark of the term "CyberSpace"? > artificial-reality (translation of the Japanese term). Look again my friend. I know that this one is the term invented by Myron Krueger quite a few years back to describe the work he was doing. And yes, it does mean about the same thing as VR. >I suggest that the adjectives "virtual" and "artificial" have meanings >saying the result we are trying to produce isn't as good as the >original. I contend a long-term goal of VR is realism--a perceptual >experience indistinguishable from the external world. Therefore the >term "synthetic-reality" may be a more accurate naming of this goal. I disagree. I don't see how the terms "virtual" or "artificial" have any more or less negative connotations than "synthetic". In fact according to my handy dandy dictionary (which is of course, hardly the last word on the subject) virtual - Existing in effect or essence, though not in actual fact or form. synthetic - Not genuine, artificial. artificial - Made by man rather than occurring in nature. Synthetic was also defined as "something resulting of synthesis" which was roughly defined as "the combining of separate elements or substances to form a coherent whole." I don't think this definition would be appropriate in this case. At any rate, I personally prefer Virtual Reality.