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Virtual worlds need to be designed. The world and the experience one can have in it must be consciously shaped. So far those using virtual worlds have never been caught up and taken away by the experience. The event usually involves a bad copy of the real world, verging on the tedious, tiresome and downright boring.We need to create worlds that are worth entering - that are INVITING - and worth spending time in - that are CAPTIVATING. They should be powerful, interesting, pleasurable, a medium of expression and experience as well as a way for people to interact with each other. It is time we stopped tinkering with the equipment and started playing with the worlds.
Traditional design approaches are not entirely suitable. A new model of the design process appropriate for the design medium needs to be developed. Just as the invention of film was initially seen as a way of documenting events, it took the artistic skills of the great directors to turn it into the powerful communicatuion medium it has become.
This is a guide to Virtual World Design, to exploring alternatives. It is only by exploring alternatives that we can gain conviction in any paticular solution.
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the very first time."
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This unpretentious little volume is a 'must' for the VR bookshelf. Its message is that attempting to copy the real world barely scratches the surface of this new medium called Virtual Reality. No-one yet knows how to begin to use it to its full potential, but here are some ways of looking at things which might not have occurred to you.
Elements in a virtual world most users take for granted (and parts that designers may miss) are addressed in this fun little book. For example, why shouldn't we just simulate reality in a virtual world? How do spatial design problems apply to virtual space? And how do users communicate with each other? VR is an emerging technology with an emerging design process. This is an 'idea book' to help explore potentials of this new medium and boost new/alternative design approaches for virtual world design. Entertaining reading for the serious and the curious.
Following her internship at the HIT Lab, architect Kathryn Best wrote what may be the first virtual-world primer for artists and designers. "The Idiot's Guide to Virtual World Design" is a treatise for non-techies on the aesthetic and intellectual implications and creative potential involved in composing and working in virtual spaces.
"The Idiot's Guide" is probably the first readable, intelligent discussion of design in virtual space.....Not only does it raise the questions of design that all world builders will have to confront at one time or another, but the guide does it with insight and humour that invite the general reader to participate in the adventure. The illustrations aptly enable the reader to appreciate the complexities.....The witty interpretations of common problems in spatial design as they apply to virtual worlds demonstrate that everyone, all of the time, is a virtual world builder in one's head. The future of the technology lies not with the specialist magicians but rather with the enthusiastic artist and craftperson living in each of us. "The Idiot's Guide" is destined to be an impulse-buy classic that has as much appeal for the trend seeking general reader as it has for the computer adept.
Kathryn Best is an architect by training and a virtual worlds aficionado.....She has put together one of the finest introductory texts on world building to date. Virtual worlds don't just spring into being. People have to put some effort into planning, designing, and programming them. Choices have to be made about what hardware to use, how to structure the program, what software tools to employ. Unfortunately, too many world builders start work after they have made only those decisions. There are other decisions, the ones that Best discusses, that are really much more important. As Best says in her foreword, "We are witnessing the birth of a new medium, and a full exploration of its inherent qualities is vital". She then hits on a point that others are also starting to make, regarding the verisimilitude of virtual worlds: There is no reason for a virtual world to replicate the real world; what's the point? It is far better to use virtual worlds to explore areas and concepts that exist only in our minds, or are on scales too disparate from our own to be comprehensible. "Besides", she adds in an illustrated aside, "simulating reality creates too high a polygon count". Where the book is strong is in identifying different ways to organize information, and pointing out that our attitude, knowledge and background affect our perception. Best shows different ways to represent information, and touches on when they are appropriate and effective. One section of the book deals with objects in virtual worlds, asking what their purpose is, a question too seldom asked by world designers, in our experience. She discusses the characteristics objects may have, such as intelligence, personality, data, color, or sound. That leads to the problems and opportunities for communication in virtual worlds. Obviously sound adds greatly to an experience, but communication does not rely only on words. The locations of objects, the non-verbal noises they make, the way they relate to other objects, in short, the stories they tell, all have the potential to provide deep, rich communications. We recommend it highly, not just for novices, but for the more experienced, especially the more technical among us, who sometimes need to be shown new ways to see old ideas.
"Virtual Worlds need to be designed". Although appartently obvious, that phrase is "lei motiv" for this interesting and enjoyble book. To date, Virtual World design has been almost always been driven by the technical limitations faced by engineers and computer scientists, whereas it should in fact be the kingdom of the interdisciplinary. Kathryn Best is an architect....and in a few, easily readable pages, she deals with the roles of metaphor and abstraction, mental map building and sense of place, and how objects function within the environment. Dispite the fact that 44 pages are barely enough to define the problems, never mind actually give any answers, the book is full of very interesting design hints. ...... it's also very "readable" and full of illustarations which exemplify the concepts raised. Heavily endorsed.