From: Robin Hollands Subject: Re: INDUSTRY: Virtual Reality is Dead! Long Live Virtual Reality! Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 16:35:59 +0100 Message-ID: <337738DF.1D86@shef.ac.uk> Organization: Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield Virtual Worlds, Inc. wrote: > > Yes, virtual reality as we know it is dead. But out of the ashes > a new virtual reality (perhaps known by a different name) will arise. > The current state of affairs in virtual reality with companies closing > and other activities signals the end of this period in technology > development. This appears to be a overly simplistic and rather naive view of the state of the technology. Virtual reality is still going strong - infact it may be stronger than ever. Just look at the number of conferences who work virtual reality into their application areas is some way or other. Like every other technology, virtual reality is an evolving entity. It may not be 'the same' as it was in the early days, but that's simply the technology maturing. The majority of the companies who have gone under are consumer HMDs manufacturers, and the only message to read into this is that we now know that the public aren't willing to pay $800 for a games accessory! Look around, the Web is going 3D - everyone seems to have caught VRML (*Virtual Reality* modelling language) fever. Industrial companies are taken the technology seriously, and many are transferring their whole design cycle into virtual products. In medicine, traditionally sceptical surgeons are accepting virtual reality as a improved form of visualisation and training. We have at last got down to the serious use and research of virtual reality technology. If the applications areas don't currently include immersive home VR games, then that's no great loss. I came into VR relatively late in the game - around 1992. When I started, there was hardly any literature on the subject, minimal understanding, and only badly designed or hugely expensive peripherals. Nowdays there are a substantial amount of learned publications on the subject to benefit from, you don't have to spend 99.9% of your time persuading a potential business user that it's not just a toy (or apologising for the graphics not being up to 'Lawnmower Man' standard), and there is a resonable choice of well designed, competitively priced hardware out there. If Virtual Worlds Inc's comments are based on a reduced demand in their company, then this is probably that they are not evolving with the technology. However, it is unfair and incorrect to claim that VR is goin through any kind of radical change. With the dilution of the definition of the phrase to include almost any computer graphics and even 'text-based' VR, it seems impossible to see how it could dissappear! Cheers, Robin Email: r.hollands@sheffield.ac.uk WWW: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/staff/rjh BOOK: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/vrhmhb