hlr@well.sf.ca.us (Howard Rheingold) (02/10/90)
This is a suggestion for making a Virtual Reality Overlay on Real Reality for a VR system that is usable in a office setting. Overlays could be very useful in making the system acceptable. Could you imagine yourself in your office unable to see what is going on around you? You would have trouble drinking a cup of coffee, might bump into walls, etc. Although meetings with people in VR could occur across large distances, the current technology suffers from the fact that facial expressions are not transmitted. An overlay that provided a ghost world on top of your surroundings (where you could set it up to conform to the room if you were room- bound) would be nice. E.g., a workstation with any number of screens floating about (front and back will have real meaning). The human mind is usually influenced heavily by the immediate surroundings--experiments in non-conscious information processing where a cue is given subliminaly can affect conscious decisions even though the conscious mind may have no explanation for the result. This ability could be utilized with an overlay reality in a convenient fashion because a mobile system could make carrying your crib sheets, reminders, library, not to mention general software, with you as you travel and be used during normal interaction with "Real Reality". The ibm pc programs like "superkey", et cetera, come to mind: these are overlays on a computer screen. I could imagine having a simple gesture conjure up visual displays. If another person has the same portable hardware, a high bandwidth infra-red line-of-sight network could make sharing images and interactions. That way you could construct something together or could show your latest multimedia documents on a virtual screen (or VR media..."want to see what my VR 'house' looks like? Let me take you there"...a few gestures and voice commands and poof the other person gets to log into your world for a restricted-shell-like visit). There are benefits of complete immersion in a virtual world, but I would think this would be done in a safe place. If the same portable hardware could do this, you could at times switch into it when you want to be somewhere else or need to do some heavy thinking in which you want no visual distractions. You could have a meeting in a designated VR place (shared reality plus your personal overlays). The Private Eye is the beginning of a technology for Overlay Virtual Reality, however it completely covers one eye, I think, so the overlay is done in the brain. Perhaps holographic optical elements could be employed to make a vision splitter to focus the VR projection in front of a person without impeding normal vision. An automatic brightness control would adjust for ambient lighting. In summary, an overlay on Real Reality would make VR more integrated into daily life, and avoid the problems associated with requiring a safe environment in which to operate the VR system. Paul E. Baclaski Sun Microsystems peb@sun.com