From: tbm19061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas B MacIukenas)
Subject: Re: VR theory?
Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1991 18:30:00 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana



How about other types of Virtual Reality than just copies of our
world?  It seems that all the work in Virtual Reality is really
focused on producing a Virtual Copy of Reality (hence the need
for 3-dimensions, tap-dancing on airplane wings, etc.).

I would be interested to know if anyone is working on other
types of Virtual Reality.

Here are some ideas I've had.  Probably none of them are actually
useful, but they would be interesting to explore:

     4 or more dimensions
     Non-newtonian physical laws (in other words, make up your
       own Theory of Everything and see what types of Universes
       you get).
     Non-space-oriented worlds.  By this I mean that our world
       is oriented around the "objects existing in empty space"
       model.  How about something completely different?
--
__ ____ ____ ________ ___tbm19061@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu___________________________
   \_  _\  _ \  _  _  \  "There's a man in the toilet selling aftershave.
     \   \  \ \  \  \  \   Now what's that all about?"
______\__ \____\__\__\__\__________________Woody Harrelson, in Doc Hollywood_



[MODERATOR'S NOTE:  There is an editorial making the same point, applying
to scientific visualization generally, in the current issue of PIXEL.  A
similar conclusion was arrived at during the IM CYBERSPACE conference in
Munich, in April. -- Bob Jacobson]