From: dstamp@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca (Dave Stampe-Psy+Eng) Subject: Re: TECH: My standard is better than your standard Date: Sat, 1 Aug 1992 13:57:42 GMT Message-ID: Organization: University of Waterloo Jeremiah.Blatz@dartmouth.edu (Jeremiah Blatz) writes: >> Here's an interesting note to the user-nonuser object discussion. >> To grasp or move an inanimate object, you can temporarily make it part of >> your user object. To do this, you get possession of of the object >> (exclusive control) by handshake messages to the object's control >> process (this also prevents multiple users from moving an object). > >Yes, but what happens when you want to do something such as play >tug-of-war or help someone move a large object? Often in the real >world two people manipulate an object, IMHO you should be able to do >as much in the VW as the RW. If each object sent its vector to every >computer that could see it (the object would appear ~larger than 1 >pixel), a compact enough packet could be sent that the world could >update quickly. To move an object, you would simply send a message >saying what force you were applying to the object. The problem is network delay. This is all very well for LANS, but for round-the-world nets (delay nearly a second at best) this type of interaction would be difficult to say the least. By negotiating for ownership of the object, the interaction appears much more natural. I agree that two peaple working together is great, but maybe the object server should tell their machines to work together i.e. "Machine A owns the object, but machine B can help". -------------------------------------------------------------------------- | My life is Hardware, | | | my destiny is Software, | Dave Stampe | | my CPU is Wetware... | | | Anybody got a SDB I can borrow? | dstamp@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca | __________________________________________________________________________