From: broehl@sunee.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) Subject: Re: TECH/PHIL: World Descriptions Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1992 15:03:14 GMT Message-ID: Organization: University of Waterloo In article <1992Jul15.165041.13794@u.washington.edu> caleb%cbmtoruucp@uunet.UU.NET (Caleb J. Howard) writes: >I think that it makes some sort >of sense to adopt as much of the 'real- world' scales and conventions >as possible. That way, my virtual space would be mapped to a >universal coordinate system (network-wide) corresponding to the >lattitude and longitude of Toronto, with local coordinates in a >cartesian space reflecting the local mapping of Toronto streets. That's a possibility, and one that should certainly be accomodated in whatever we come up with. However, I can also see people wanting to model (say) a living cell with different subsystems; th is requires a very different scale. Others may want to teach an astronomy course by taking the class on a virtual tour of the solar system; again, a different scale. >Interaction will likely not be in realtime, (initially, anyway) as to >insist on this feature is to rarify the userdom to the extreme. (gurus >and God machines only;-). I don't think this is true. If we do it right, the machines and networks you would need for real-time interaction are already out there. >With the differences in human schedules worldwide, most communication is >done offline anyway. Yes, but we could agree to meet at any time we like; if we want to have a virtual tennis match (with observers) at noon your time and midnight my time, why not? >Well, what do you think? Are these ideas ignorant? Not at all; at this early stage, all input is welcome. -- Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept Mail: broehl@sunee.waterloo.edu OR broehl@sunee.UWaterloo.ca BangPath: uunet!watmath!sunee!broehl Voice: (519) 885-1211 x 2607 [work]