From: bluefire@well.com (Bob Jacobson)
Subject: Re: MISC: VR thoughts
Date: 31 Jan 1998 00:11:21 GMT
Message-ID: <6atq79$95g$1@was.hooked.net>
Organization: The Well, San Francisco, CA


I agree with Mike Bevans that "virtual reality" is less often in
dispute as a term because the options that it formerly described --
almost anything -- are now constrained to concrete applications.

My point was that for every mention in whatever index of virtual
reality (which often is taken to mean VRML, a fish of a different
breed), there are ten or a dozen masquerading as "CAD," "animation,"
"simulation," "rapid prototyping," "data visualization," and so forth.
Maybe masquerading is the wrong term, since the professionals working
in these fields see themselves as, say, CAD people rather than VR
people.  It would not occur to them to call their practice "VR."

All being said and done, the VR crosscut, while not intuitive, is
useful in tracking technological change that might otherwise be
subsumed and lost amid a thousand blooming flowers of industrial
innovations.

Bob

bluefire@well.com (Bob Jacobson)