quasar@neuromancer.leis.bellcore.com (Laurence R. Brothers) (02/19/91)
Defining VW (VR? AR? SR?) is kind of like defining AI (AI is what
AI researchers do). Obviously there's been real-time 3d animation,
particularly in games, for some time. One hesitates to say that
any particular type of equipment (headmounts, etc.) is necessary, even
though one would like to distinguish BattleZone from a "real" VR* system.
Or do you want to admit BattleZone? You had to peer through goggles in the
arcade version of the game.... And what about the old electromechanical
"Sea Wolf" arcade game? Is that VR the way the Difference Engine is
a computer?
Anyhow, as long as we refrain from making unscientific claims in
a scientific forum (ie, IMHO, like Pons and Fleischman), we should be OK.
I have no problem with people like Leary getting excited about VR, but then,
they aren't publishing in scholarly journals....
*VW is a kind of car, not a subfield of computer or cognitive science :-)
Actually, "Virtual Environment" sounds the most restrained and academic-like
to me, but then it is a little vague in its connotation. "Artificial" and
"synthetic" just don't mean what is intended. My apartment is both "artificial"
and "synthetic", but it isn't, I hope, "virtual".
--
Laurence R. Brothers (quasar@bellcore.com)
Bellcore -- Computer Technology Transfer -- Knowledge-Based Systems
"There is no memory with less satisfaction in it than the memory
of some temptation we resisted." -- James Branch Cabell