perry@key.COM (Perry The Cynic) (07/26/90)
Here's a question for you. It may be a bit off the usual paths, but then
aren't we all...
Let's assume for the moment that I'm building a virtual world system.
Rather than worry about the interface (gloves, displays, etc.) I'm thinking
about the controlling computer's "insides". If I build a simulated (cyber?)desk
,
I need to build a software model that describes the desk in enough detail, so
that the user can interact with it (looking, touching, hitting :-) without
getting thrown by inconsistencies, or confused by lack of expected detail.
My question is, how much *information* (i.e. non-redundant data) is there
in such a common-place thing as a desk? 10^3 bytes? 10^6?
Of course I'm not worrying about desks alone. How much information is there
in a simulated car the user sits in? How much information in the view out
of the window? How much in the attractive secretary over there? (That's not
a smiley here; how many bytes in the outward appearance of a human persona?
How many in a simple psychological profile?)
Obviously I will want to make use of the human propensity for abstraction.
We habitually ignore most information around us, and we're quite adept at
completing general appearances with imagined details. But what to do, if
the user takes a (simulated) magnifying glass and goes over his desk's
surface?
I'm of course not asking for precise numbers. Has anybody looked into what
orders of magnitude we're talking about here? If I want to allow my user to
freely roam a simulated one-family house, am I already well into Gigabytes?
Who's doing work in that area? Is anybody, or are we all mesmerized with
datagloves and floating cylinders?
And here's a bonus question for the very daring (for extra dis-credit):
how many bytes in a human mind? Setting aside all the moral and philosophical
questions, what order of magnitude of information is there in a human brain?
A human body?
Thanks for your help
-- perry
P.S.: I better confess. I'm writing a Science Fiction novel involved with
virtual realities and the simulation of things and people, and I'd
like to get at least my orders of magnitude anywhere near right.
I figured you people here are most likely to have *thought* about
these things before...
--
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Perry The Cynic (Peter Kiehtreiber) perry@arkon.key.com
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