From: Peter Hickman Subject: Re: Meckler Conference Taking Place NOW, in London! Date: 10 Jun 91 10:34:58 GMT Organization: University of Sussex Virtual Reality '91 Somewhere in London 5th-6th June I went here, indeed I was also responsible for pointing this out to many friends here at Sussex and getting them to go, on the 6th. I can't say much about the Conference part of the show ( except there were an awful lot of people wearing business suits ) as my funds only allowed me to go as far as the free exhibition. Well first off there were only 5 exhibitors and for no good reason they were on two floors. Two of them were the souped up CAD type systems, two sported the weird headgear and the last showed us 3D TV. We had a program here called Horizon that covered VR several weeks ago and it must be said that I have now had a go on all the major exhibits (Virtuality, CyberZone and the NASA like head set) and feel less inclined to VR than I first was. The place looked and sounded like a games arcade and all of the systems seemed to be based around interactive CAD systems. I don't have anything against CAD but simply adding a new interface to it doesn't really change things it mearly facilitates escapism for those who lack imagination. The 3D television however looked good but here again a somewhat less sexy product was really being displayed. The trick with the 3D TV was that the makers had a method of compressing two signals into one and decoding it in real time - a remarkable achivement indeed but is it really VR? When I talked to the salesman as to whome his major clients were it came down to security firms who wanted their security cameras to record as much information as possible and vidio companies who wanted to get as much on a tape as possible ( 8 chanels on a 2 inch tape seems a posiblilty ). Any clients for the 3D aspect? Not really, it just brought in the crowds. So I left disappointed and sporting a big headache ( by the way if any exhibitors are reading I was the one in black leather from Cognitive Sciences ). When I was little and armed with nothing more than imagination we had this thing that our parents called escapism, now we have computers we have Interactive Architecture, Interactive Landscape Gardening, Interactive Interior Design and Interactive Games and we call it Virtual Reality. It all seems much less real that the games I used to play and the books that I now read. Someone please tell me that this exhibition was just a blind and that VR has something vibrant to show us rather than the fact that the Marketing Machine has yet to run out of new names for old markets. Peter Hi Peter "You're doing computing as an ARTS degree!" Hickman COGS U/G PH, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QH --------------------------------------- peterhi@uk.ac.sussex.syma ------------ SOMETHING EMBASASING UNDER CONSTRUCTION (other than the spelling!) --------------------------------------- peterhi@uk.ac.sussex.tsuna ----------- "More beer, more shouting, resistance is useless" - USTA bars [MODERATOR'S NOTE: William Bricken just returned from the Meckler Conference and reports, "It's the best conference I've been to." We look forward to his posting a full report from inside the conference. -- Bob Jacobson]