From: harrison@beta.lanl.gov (David A. Harrison)
Subject: DESIGN: Defining time and space by containers
Date: Thu, 6 Aug 1992 22:06:50 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Aug6.220650.23711@newshost.lanl.gov>
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory



How about making every object have its own coordinate system, time
scale, and routing/filtering for the objects that it contains.  These
factors can even be specified as ratios to the systems external to the
container.  If every object acts as a router to the objects that it
contains then it can decide whether or not its contents are affected
or can affect the outside world.  The containers can even have the
power to modify messages that pass to or from its contents.  For
example, a room is a container which is in turn contained by the
building which is turn contained by the virtual world.  I am standing
inside this room and I am speaking to another person in the room.  All
of my verbal messages are being sent to my container which is the
room.  The container can then realistically muffle the sound before
passing it on to the outside world.

If every object defines the time scale for its contents, then slowing
down a simulation will automatically slow down its components.  Since
the time scales of its components are specified as a ratio to the time
scale of the simulation, the simulation will continue working exactly
as it did before--except slower.

If every object specifies the coordinate system for its contents then
we can have situations where the insides of a container are much
larger than the outside.  It would be possible for the virtual world
to be relatively small compared to the total space that the buildings
in the virtual world contain.  The virtual world could expand
infinitely since only the outermost containers need to be specified in
virtual world coordinates, the inner containers can be as large as the
virtual world itself and can open up into more containers that are as
large as the virtual world.  This could be done infinitely.  We could
also allow the coordinate systems to vary in the number bits that are
used to represent coordinates. Why limit oneself to 64 or 128 bits?
Allow the container to specify the coordinate system using some
standard approach that all objects can understand.

David Harrison