From: Jorge Alvoeiro <J.Alvoeiro@PSY.HULL.AC.UK>
Subject: INDUSTRY: Virtual i-O death????
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 15:41:59 +0000
Message-ID:  <332971C7.68B0@psy.hull.ac.uk>
Organization: Dept. of Psychology, Hull University, Hull HU6 7RX, England


Hi all,

According to the latest VR News mag ViO is in difficulties and
according to the author of the article this is due to the fact of
'... low-cost HMDs produce unacceptable image quality' Sorry but I DO
NOT AGREE with this conclusion. Virtual reality is something which
CANNOT develop into the consumer market only because there is NO
MARKET for it. But even more basic is that THERE IS NO CULTURE of
virtual reality. What is the use of having fast computers and high
resolution HMDs if people have never experienced this sort of activity
before? What is need is to start at school level and them build
up. Here in the UK most schools have a computer because the old BBC
computer was cheap and available to them. Thus when these young people
reached University age they were already well conversed with computers
and knew what they did. Similar sort of thing happened in the US with
the Apple computer.

But virtual reality is a totally new concept in computer interaction
and people at large do not know what to use it for. This is almost
like the invention of the faithfull mouse. It allowed people to
interact with computers. It made sense to move a mouse and see an
arrow to move on the screen. Now put a VR glove on and try to explain
to an adult what this thing can do. The first thing s/he will ask is
whether is similar to a mouse. One can say that it is but it can do
other things as well. The problem is that for this person the OTHER
THINGS may be very alien to him/her because did never have any early
experience of these other moves. This can only happen when if this new
technology is used by schools and projects/software are developed for
people at young age.

So STOP that nonsense about CONSUMER MARKET. There are enough ViOs,
CyberMaxxs and Virtualities situations already. Let's direct our
attention into the development of virtual reality projects for schools
and secondary education. Until such decision and redirection of market
forces are taken Virtual Reality is NEVER going to develop at any level.

Bye for now.
Jorge.
--
Jorge Alvoeiro,         Phone: +44 [0]1482 465778
Dept. of Psychology,    Fax:   +44 [0]1482 465599
Hull University,        E-MAIL: J.Alvoeiro@psy.hull.ac.uk
Cottingham Road,        CUSeeMe: p073.psy.hull.ac.uk
Hull HU6 7RX, England