From: jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au (John Costella) Subject: Re: INDUSTRY: FLASH! "VPL is dead, long live VPL . . ." Date: Fri, 11 Dec 92 10:25:06 EST > From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen) > jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au (John Costella) writes: > There's a bit of a problem with fundamental physics here. Either > you want to overlay the virtual world on the real world or not. If > so, then fine: you will one day have a holodeck to play with. But > if you *do not* want the real world to ``shine through'' the > virtual one (and many applications may desire this) then the simple > fact is that you have to block out the photons coming from the real > world. > > So what's the focus of VR? Creating virtual worlds or sealing off the > real world? Up until now the focus has been the latter. Why? > Because playing with gloves and goggles is much more fun, and a hell > of a lot easier, than dealing with boring, stuffy things like > databases, information representation, and physical and scientific > simulations. Is this good? I think not. Hey, why do you think *I* want this stuff to succeed? To play Dactyl Nightmare? Of course not. I've strangled around with trying to get 3-D views of physical and scientific simulations onto a 2-D screen, and it just don't work. Sure, I can set up all sorts of orthographic, perspective or whatever other views you like, rotating, panning, zooming, and whatever you happen to like (one app in particular: following an electron's motion in a magnetic field with the full relativistic equations of motion, including dipole forces---a manifestly 3-D problem), and *I* can, with a few days' playing with it, reconstruct in my mind how the motion fits together in 3-D space, since I wrote the program. But trying to explain this 2-D projection to an audience of physicists is like trying to describe the elephant that you only have hold of one foot of. So I want to be able to let them wander around the electrons' paths and see their spins precessing, in 3-D. Now, I've got so many of the damn electrons around (to give an idea of distributions) that I *definitely* do *not* want the sight of the Melbourne CBD through the window, and the sound of trams rolling past down Swanston Street, to shine through into the virtual world, for this particular application. It is just noise. The virtual world is not congruent with a building: it is, in fact a vacuum, with a magnetic field that would probably rip you to shreds. Is that "serious" enough for you? Are maybe electrons important enough to humanity to warrant me wanting to set this app up in 5 or 10 years' time, when the cost will be justifiable? I hope so. > This isn't a joke. VR just isn't taken seriously, and the fixation on > gloves, goggles, and VPL has been the primary cause. From a UPI news > > Now why do you suppose they would say such a thing? Not because it's > true, certainly. I mean, come on. Flights of fancy and hyperbole are > one thing, but isn't something a little bit off-kilter when the chief > spokesman of one's supposedly ``scientific'' field is Jaron Lanier? I wouldn't care if it were Mickey Mouse. The price of the pudding will be in the eating. If the hardware and software is good, then companies will buy. If not, they won't. So now we have a time of limbo while the pudding is being cooked. Let's not kick too hard when they're down. John ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- John P. Costella School of Physics, The University of Melbourne jpc@tauon.ph.unimelb.edu.au Tel: +61 3 543-7795, Fax: +61 3 347-4783 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------