From: growf@ucscl.ucsc.edu (Purple Dragons!  EVERYWHERE!!!)
Subject: Re: Cyberspace, not laptops (was Re: the interface for 
Date: 8 May 91 20:28:21 GMT
Organization: No affiliation to anything having to do with VR



In article <> autodesk!robertj@uunet.UU.NET (Young Rob Jellinghaus) writes:

[ Description of neat-toy VR goggles deleted. ]

>just by pointing, or by grabbing hold of something and pulling it towards
>you.  If you want, you could have an "anchor" unit which you could
>position and radio-link to your belt unit; now as you walk around the
>objects stand still, so you could walk around a model and examine it
>from all angles.

I can see it now.  Every office will have a little treadmill around
some stationary object which is the 'object' you are viewing in cyberspace.
Two or three people on any given treadmill, each with their own
viewpoint on what the central object 'is'.  The treadmill figures out
how quickly you walk around the object.

Would the cyberspace 'object' get superimposed over what you're centering
on?  If not, things are gonna get really hectic.

>If you get confused between the real world and the superimposed images,
>just clip some black sunshades on the front of your glasses.  Bingo,
>you're just seeing the cyberspace.

Seems to me this would be the norm, not the exception.  Most backgrounds
are way too busy to really let you concentrate on what you're doing on
the screen, and I dunno, but something just seems _weird_ about
staring blankly at a wall while using the glasses for mudding.
Tho the glasses would of course be necessary for certain applications,
such as smartgun displays and things along those lines.

>The real problem with all this, of course, is the glasses.  They're a
>pain.  Any cyberspace interface that's based on this "superimposed-
>images" model will need them, though, unless we can come up with video
>contact lenses....

Or replacement eyes with built-in displays, depending on how cyberpunk
you want to get about this  :)

>>Why, it might even have a built-in voice recognition chip, and you
>>can dictate into it, walk around, then click a button on the pen
>>to paste your words into your document.
>Right.  The cyberspace interface would go even better with voice recog.
>Point to the image of a person and start talking; your words get saved
>as electronic mail and linked to the person's inbox.  Etcetera ad
>infinitum.

Doesn't the NeXT already have a way of inserting a verbal message into
pretty much any given part of a file?  The brochure I was reading
had an example of a message attached to a spreadsheet, or text mail,
or something like that.  Seems like it would be much to send voice
recordings (digital or otherwise) through the electronic medium, rather
than writing parsers to first interpret the speech and/or patch it back
to voice at the other end.

>>I am definitely not thinking in terms of DOS or Macintosh with a
>>much faster processor in a smaller box.
>Nor am I.  It'll be fun, won't it?  And the super cyberspace system I
>describe above is almsot certainly no more than twenty years away....
>(boy, predictions are easy to make!  Anyone have a different opinion?)

I dunno.  Depends on how quickly we can get computer sizes down.
I wouldn't be surprised if we see desktop-scaled hardware for the above
in, oh, 5-10 years.  Probably more like 5.

>Rob Jellinghaus                 | "Next time you see a lie being spread or

Tom Wylie