From: John Eagan <76130.2225@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: Re: Sci-VW: DESIGN: Doors between virtual worlds
Date: 07 Aug 92 15:18:32 EDT



Rob Jellinghaus writes:

>The discussions about virtual-world standards are very interesting,
>but they seem to be converging on some sort of single world model
>where there is one unified world per viewer of the world, and objects
>as they come into that world are made into a part of the world's
>coordinate space.  This is essentially a fully 3-D model, in which all
>the objects in your virtual range of vision are in the "same" world
>with you.
>
> (some deleted)
>
>One of the things I would like most in a virtual world of mine is
>virtual gateways between worlds.  Imagine a door that opens, not into
>the next room in your 3D space, but into another space entirely.  Or a
>window that looks out into another place.  This imagery goes back all
>the way to Alice in Wonderland, if not before, and I would be very
>depressed if I couldn't (for example) hand someone a box that they can
>step into and fall into my world.
>
> (other stuff deleted, interesting suggestions about "space portals")

I think Rob has put his virtual finger on an interesting question
here. In fact, this sort of thing may be one of the most significant
fundamental properties of "cyberspace", that would take it beyond
being just a computer simulation of the world around us with a lot of
details left out.

At first glance, it seems (possibly oversimplifying here!) that it may
not be a huge problem to implement, when you consider all the
questions and decisions being wrestled with in this subject. It seems
like the basic solution to Rob's suggestion (my "oh, sure, it's easy
for you to say, now let's see you do it!" idea :-) is to have, as part
of the standards for any sort of networked VR, a set of basic
attributes for a "world", covering things like Scale, Gravity,
blablabla. [side note: may I suggest a definition of terms like so: a
"zone" of the kind Rob is talking about would be termed a "World"..and
the overall, all-inclusive cyberspace that everybody on the same net
would be part of, no matter where they are, is the "Universe"...these
terms allow a little more conceptual slack than calling everything
available in the VR net "The World"] Then, when a boundary is crossed
(Rob's "portal"), the user crossing that and entering a new World gets
a short "worlddef" packet containing the basic laws of physics in that
World and various details for his machine like scale, etc.  This set
of fundamentals received in the "worlddef" packet is then true while
the user resides in that World, until they cross through a portal
again, when they get a packet defining the new space.

Actually, there's another one...in the Universe, have a common ground
termed "Space" (to simply extend the "Universe" metaphor here) where
there is no gravity, etc....the "in between" stuff, in short; with
various Worlds contained in it. When you enter a World, you gets yer
packet, and them's the rules as long as yer in that World.

Of course, we could get really hairy with this! You could have "worlds
within Worlds", getting into the Alice in Wonderland stuff Rob alluded
to, or things along the lines of "wormholes in space", etc., etc..
This could get into really mindbending areas here! One could get
absolutely, completely, utterly lost! (of course, the sort of ideas
we're getting into may be just the sort of range of possibilities that
so intrigue many people about the idea of "cyberspace" to begin with,
right?) There might be a need for a kind of Big Red Button here, a
"take me home!" panic switch that would instantly return you to a set
starting point in Space, if you were completely lost and confused.

Related to this, I'll point to Michael Benedikt's chapter in
"Cyberspace: First Steps" about some basic proposals for concepts. In
particular, the ideas about "folded space" and "extrinsic and
intrinsic" dimensions. The idea his chapter suggests is that in the
"Universe", you don't necessarily have to travel a (apparent) long
distance between "Worlds", there can be a fairly tight group of little
boxes, spheres, or whatever, that mark the location of "Worlds". Then,
entering the portal for a particular World causes the receipt of the
"worlddef" packet, that World "unfolds" before you (around you?) and
there you are, until you hit the portal again.

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*John Eagan                         "humans is funny critters.." *
*VR section leader                                   -me         *
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