From: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson)
Subject: Virtually Dead: The Grateful Dead VR Show, Part 2
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1991 16:55:36 GMT
Organization: Human Interface Technology Lab, Univ. of Wash., Seattle



THE GRATEFUL DEAD VR SHOW, Part 2


Topic  78:  Virtual shows.
#  7: Alex Whitney (bltz)      Sat, Jul 27, '91  (21:00)      91 lines


        The next topic was on the Virtual Tour, and the response was a
 novice named Pete, a short guy with a moustache, asking how virtual
 reality worked.  Dave pondered this for a minute.  He had a lot of
 knowledge in this field. (Dave had been on the three man team at Sprint
 back in 1993 that had written the proposal suggesting the trail removal
 of long distance rates for the city of Bridgeport, Conneticut.  The trial
 had been so successful that anxious superiors had waited for only three
 weeks of computer modeling (and the avalanche of subcriptions to Sprint)
 to determine to abolish rates in the fifty three states. Other big
 companies had followed suit in six months, or perished. Sprint had used
 the extra money to upgrade their digital services everywhere at emergency
 speed.  They had sorted out some software and technical problems on the
 fly, but it had worked well.  Europe and Hong Kong had fallen in eight
 months, and then things had slowed down some, as the phone system in The
 Soviet Republics was finished; but the timing of that had been almost
 perfect. The Soviets and been due for an upgrade since 1955. And the
 benefit to humanity of upgrading the speed and types of information had
 been immesurable.)

        He framed his response after logging off.

                    *                 *                 *

        Pete:  Virtual reality became possible in the early nineties.
 Four things made it possible.  1) the upgrade of the world to a higher
 standard of telecommunications hardware, especially fiber optics (and new
 information transfer protocols such as Second Generation Digital, capable
 of carrying compressed high quality sound and three dimensional images);
 2) the evolution of Multimedia technology and the realization that people
 were interested in multimedia and virtual reality in the privacy of their
 own homes (there was a market for virtual reality); 3) the development of
 new models for artificial intelligence, and the quantum leap in computing
 power that made creating virtual reality possible.  A few people had been
 working on Virtual reality, and several corporations saw the possibility
 for a new kind of home entertainment: something that was live, yet which
 one didn't have to drive through hundreds of miles of ugly, dangerous,
 and inefficient traffic to get to. Something that you could still share
 with your friends, and make new friends through, using the magic of
 computer networks.

        They did some very expensive reasearch, and came up with a sound
 and vision display system that looked like a helmet, which worked with a
 mainframe computer to display an alternate reality to the wearer.
 Feedback from the helmet told the computer about the wearers actions, and
 the computer could react accordingly.  Performers locked onto this, as a
 way of bringing their entertainment to groups of people who they had
 never been able to reach before, and a way of bringing entertianment to
 people in a way that avoided the dangers of a large crowd of people.
 Sitting at home in New York City, one could spend a real night at the
 Boston Pops, or in the living room of a friend on the West Coast.
 Fantasy settings and games were also made possible.  The keys to this
 were the helmet, the computers, and the cabling that hooked them
 together.  The phone lines of 1990 could not accomodate the amount of
 information needed to accomplish these goals. The computers had enough
 power, but the programming tools were not yet efficient enough to develop
 the software needed in a reasonable amout of time. And it was expensive.

        A major stumbling block was the transmittal of the helmet wearers
 body position to the computer.  For a few years, Virtual reality was a
 realm of mannequins, stick-like figures.  You would put on your helmet
 and there would be your friend Alan, but he would not look like Alan, he
 would only sound like him, unless he had a booth set up in his home with
 a cumbersome number of expensive cameras.  Then some people who worked
 for a little company that used to work for Apple Computer designed the
 "snake".  The snake used velcro straps to attatch neatly onto the back,
 arms and legs of the helmet wearer, and transmitted an unbelievable
 amount of information: facial expression, positions of arms and hands,
 color of hair.  This technology is quite mysterious, and the company has
 grown very wealthy from it.  Furthermore, they will not patent it, and no
 one has been able to figure out how it works.

        Virtual Reality never replaced television. Oh, the cabling made
 telvision more interactive, and of higher quality, but television
 provides a distance that many enjoy. Virtual reality did integrate
 smoothly with cable programming, however, and children often spend too
 many hours on the final frontier, while bumping into the walls of their
 homes.  Nobody ever figured out an easy way to walk in Virtual Reality
 while holding still in your living room.

        Do you want more information about anything?

                    *                 *                 *

        That ought to hold him for a bit, Dave thought.  The recent drop
 in the price of headsets had brought a bunch of plug in new comers to the
 gig.

        He had to get ready for the show.  Nancy would be by in a few hours.
 He logged on and posted the response, read through the rest of his stuff,
 and shut down the Mac....
--