From: chris@ug.cs.dal.ca (chris d robertson)
Subject: Re: Definition of Virtual Reality
Date: 	Thu, 17 Oct 1991 01:31:51 -0300
Organization: Math, Stats & CS, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada



In article <1991Oct15.213242.17387@watserv1.waterloo.edu> dstamp@watserv1.
waterloo.edu (Dave Stampe-Psy+Eng) writes:

>                  ... Virtual reality should require some mechanism to fool
> the user's visual orienting system, such as wide-angle video (over 50 degrees
> of visual angle) and/or scenes that change with the user's head or body 
> motions.  Anyone who has seen an IMAX film will realize just how good
> these techniques are at subsuming a user's spatial senses.
> ...
> Stuff like rendering quality, scene complexity, and binocular vision for
> depth can follow: without the sense of spatial identity, it ain't VR for me.

For whatever defining an already healthy term is worth, I think it
would be important to include interactive simulations for other senses
as well.  A simulation of reality (or otherwise!) has only the test of
perception to pass, but perhaps it is only an accident of evolution
that for us, the sense of vision seems most friutful in effecting the
illusion of presence, and so it is easy over-emphasize the importance
of this one particular sensory mode.

I recall hearing of an Amiga-driven system which used (i think) tv cameras
to track the motions of two drumsticks held by the user.  The virtual
drumkit could be played just by flailing your arms in the direction of the
appropriate pre-preprogrammed "zone" (air drumming).  Of course, it could
drive MIDI gear, so you could trigger whatever sounds you liked.

Now there is a 1:1 relationship of events between what the user does and
what the user experiences; as far as the ear is concerned, there might as
well _be_ a drum in that area your poking ...

Also there is the system (i think from MIT Media Labs) that allows one
to "conduct" a computerized orchestra.

Were asked for my 2e-37 cents worth, I think I would include these
systems as VR, or at the very least a clear component of a more
complete VR.

	- Chris

PS - Imagine olfactory VR, or even <sense_of_taste_adjective> VR!

				       ^-- culinary?  palettal?  ;)