From: John Costella Subject: Re: TECH: Virtual worlds with alternative physics and/or Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 12:40:20 +1000 (EET) From: John Costella JPC: > > --- we were starting to talk about warped space, wormholes, > > non-standard gravity, and that sort of thing, which you succinctly call > > the "carnival ride" :-). Except in theme parks, they are probably best > > avoided. > Ed: [..] > hilarious images. Metaphors, I think, give us the same effect. Warp > drive through a database, for instance, could allow rapid scanning of > thumbnail drawings or summarized text. The higher the warp speed, the > greater the decimation of the data and the faster it "flys" by. I have no problem with this, provided that the transformation is relatively simple, and seems to be intuitively useful. The effects I was warning against were at the level of wormholes --- not the sort on Deep Space 9, but really warped space and time, such that what you are "seeing" is so weird that it'd take you a while to sort out what the geometry was doing. Like the light coming from something bending around the corner before you see it --- our visual systems just aren't made to deal with that. It's mind-bending for graduate courses in general relativity, but would confuse more than it helped for most everyday situations. Geez, even consider how weird it is trying to understand how a straight broom handle bends as it enters the water, and the depth seems shallower than it is! And this is with the very simplest of optical phenomena coming into play (a change in refractive index over a planar boundary) ... (Flame-retardant: I love DS9, and am hanging out for the Voyager premiere, which we still haven't seen down under yet ... :-) > I understand your concern that alternate physics could be too wierd to > adapt to. But consider the many cases where we are "victimized" by > physics. Problem: objects fall when we don't want them to. Solution: > allow the user to "turn off" gravity for that object. Problem: We are > having difficulty finding an object which is obscured by walls or > other objects. Solution: variable depth x-ray vision. Problem: a > novice user is having difficulty manipulating objects. Solution: dial > in reduced gravity for the entire environment. Yep, yep, yep, I agree with all of these 100%. I guess I'm taking these "simple" modifications of physics as granted. What I'm warning against is an attempt at an anything-goes, locally weird geometry. Actually, back to Star Trek --- it provides a good reference point. Any physicist knows that the visual effects in Star Trek are only a small subset of what would REALLY happen at relativistic speeds, or (presumably) under warp drive (we're still working on that). But they are visually effective --- they have been well chosen to convey the meaning of what's happening. So basically, anything you see on Star Trek (or could conceivably see) is an acceptable "warping" of spacetime, that still gives you a good idea of what's happening. Anything that ventures too far from this might be interesting to play with, but may harm your interface rather than help it. I'm sure the producers of ST have discussed these issues many times ... are none of them on this group? > boring. Exaggerations of scale, color, mass, importance, movement, > etc. are simple devices which can be used. Personalization is also a Agreed. ===================================================================== Dr John P. Costella School of Physics, The University of Melbourne mailto:jpc@physics.unimelb.edu.au http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~jpc Phone: +61 3 9344-5435 Home: +61 3 9768-9268 Fax: +61 3 9347-4783 =====================================================================