From: Niels Hilbrink Subject: Re: INDUSTRY: Successful VR Apps Date: Mon, 09 Dec 1996 08:50:59 +0100 Organization: National Aerospace Laboratory John Alway wrote: > I must respectfully disagree. VR technology has wider > and deeper application possibilities than does the venerable > helicopter and for much lower cost. VR technology will help > engineers immensely. It will become an indespensible aid to > model visualization so much so that no successful company will be > able to do without it. It will aid in science, and complicated > procedures, such as surgeries. > Well I agree that it (VR) might be of some help to engineers but not the full immersive stuff, more in the line of a virtual display like proposed by Ellis. Full immersion has great entertainment value, it remains to be seen if people who really need VR on a regular basis respond well to putting on a HMD every time. My two cents says they won't. As far as the helicompter analogy goes, sure your right the price tag is a lot higher, but the correct comparison is not VR-User <-> Helicoper buyer but Aeroplane buyer (eg Cessna citation) <-> Helicopter buyer and VR user <-> simple 3D user. VR might have a broader field of application than and Helicopter does, but then again a airplane has a much more limited use normal computers, so the comparison stands. Even if VR might conquer the design world, or surgery world, etc. it doesn't do so right now does it ? I'm a dreamer myself, like I hope most of the other people in this newsgroup, but I'm also an engineer (well technically not, but I will be in about 5 months). What I'm trying to say is that we need to start constructing application for parts of the technical/scientific community that cannot do without VR. It is there that VR will receive recognition not in the entertainment business, they forget a toy as quickly as a new one can be created. Take computers as a example, they migrated from the scientific/military community on the 70s to the ordinary every day use we know now. Once again I argue for a the use of VR in place where it is absolutely needed, sections of science for which VR is the ONLY way of doing it. Best regards, Nils -- ======================================================================== | I didn't really say all the things that I said. You probably didn't | | read what you thought you read. Statistics show that this whole | | thing is more than likely just a hideous misunderstanding. | ======================================================================== Niels Hilbrink (RS NOP) National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) mailto:Hilbrink@nlr.nl Voorsterweg 31, 8316 PR Marknesse (++31)(0)527 242259 (Home) P.O. Box 153, 8300 AD Emmeloord (++31)(0)527 248724 (NLR) the Netherlands http://www.xs4all.nl/~ripley/Niels/niels.html