From: Tom Sarver <andersen!tsarver@uunet.UU.NET>
Subject: Prospective Database Application (Was Re:  A message to all of the labs
Date: Mon, 21 Jan 91 09:43:53 CST


Hey guys,
What are y'all thinkin' about doin' with these Virtual Worlds?  What's their
purpose, application?  For which applications would a virtual world be a
superior choice over a workstations (or terminal, teletype, calculator, ...)?
And why is VW the superior choice?  What makes it qualitatively better?

One step further.  What applications could not be done _without_ VWs?  Which
sectors of the industry would these applications serve?

Finally, how does a VW add value to a company?  Does it make the knowledge
workers more productive?  Does it reduce learning curve?  What arguments are
there which apply to VW which go beyond the "better GUI" arguments?

I've raised a lot of questions.  Here's an application which might help you
get those juices flowing:

What about a software development environment in which all the elements of the
software are represented by VW objects.  Each object has appendages which
show physically what that object does (in a Sofware Engineering (SE) sort of
way).  These appendages should be based on the concepts from the book called
_The Psychology of Everyday Things_ (by somebody or rather; it's easily found).

The programmer would "fly" around these objects, manipulating them.  S/He could
become a data object and be carried along the data stream to see how the system
manipulates it.  He could fly along the flow of control from object to object.

(BTW:  I am not implying object-oriented programming (design, analysis, etc.).
An "object" can be any hardware or software item such as a parallel port, a
disk drive stream, a module, a function, a line of code, a data base, a record
layout, a document, a data record, etc.)

The aspect of this application which makes it qualitatively different from
one using a workstation is 1) the level of interaction with the system; and
2) programming becomes physically manipulative and fully visual.  An example of
point 1) is being able to take on the "action" of the system.  Current work-
benches force a static view of a system.  Run-time debuggers, a different class
of tool isn't designed to manipulate the system (data, code, hardware).

Point 2) changes the way we would program.  I opens up programming to the
ordinary person by doing all the visualization.  It would present (and repre-
sent) all the abstraction mechanisms most developers maintain in their heads.

Finally, it would change the way we do programming-in-the-large.  Programmers
would be able to converse and manipulate and demonstrate using representations
of software objects.  Getting the idea across would no longer depend on fuzzy
diagrams;  one would simply dive into the same spot in the VW and point and
manipulate and explain along the way.

This is an example of an application which could be revolutionized by VW.
What others can you think of?  Are you actually working on them?  Extending
the state of the art of Virtual Reality is valuable, but having an application
in your pocket can't hurt when it comes time to apply for funding.  Isn't VR
to the point that we can start looking at useful applications?  Isn't it just
as challenging to deal with a domain which can be turned into a VW?

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% Tom Sarver: tsarver@andersen.com | "Only Amiga makes it possible!"    //\   %
% "A real computer has a linear address space. NO 386's!!"          \\ //--\  %
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