90-09/vr.story
From: zap@lage.lysator.liu.se (Zap Andersson)
Subject: A 'realistic' VR scenario... with comment
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 90 16:14:57 GMT
Organization: Lysator Computer Club, Linkoping University, Sweden


  A "realistic" Cyberspace scenery....

  A man walks into his office one morning, sits down at his cyber work
station. He puts his goggles on (small, lightweight, high resolution,
also containing earphones of course), puts his MultiPowerGloves on,
sits down in his seat.  At his left hand, he has a small keypad for
various functions in cyberspace.  In front of him is a workspace,
empty now, but it will be filled with (cyber) things when he jacks in.
This is for him to have something to rest his hands/arms on.

  He reaches for the ON key. The keys on the small keypad are
organized in such a way that you do not need to see them to operate
them. As the cyberstation boots, cyberspace hurls in from all over,
and his workspace in front of him is filled with what he was doing
yesterday.

  In front of him he now sees a desk with some objects on. He has a
database nearby, that he has chosen to visually represent as a minute
file cabinet. There is a datalink, that he has chosen to visually
represent as a telephone. There is also a monitor program that checks
out some kind of industrial process happening in the basement of the
office building were he works. Since out friend has a sense of humor,
he has chosen to represent this as a flower in a vase. The color of
the flower, and the amount of water in the vase has relations to
certain processes in the basement. There is also a toolbox on his
desk.

  Now he is going to design a little mecanical device for an engine.
He touches the toolbox, while his left hand hits the 'open' key on the
small keypad, and it opens, revealing som boxes with symbols on. He
picks up one box, puts it on the table next to the toolbox, and opens
it in a similar way. This was the box of Primitive Geometry, and he
can see some small objects inside the box.  While still holding the
box, he presses the 'SIZE' button on his keypad, grabs a corner of the
box and drags it, and the box grows to more handy proportions.  He
picks out a cylinder and puts it on the table. He picks out another
cylinder and places it floating an inch above the first cylinder. He
puts his finger on the first cylinder, and presses the 'SIZE' and
'INFO' buttons with his left hand. This lets him do the sizing
procedure, but also displays the exact numerical size above the
cylinder. When he is satisfied with the size, he does the same thing
to the other cylinder. Now both cylinders are 1 inch high end 3 inches
in diameter and 1.5 inch apart. He picks up yet another cylinder from
the box and resizes it to a long thin shape. Then he puts this new
cylinder straight through the other two. He presses the 'ACTION'
button with his left hand, and a small menu appears to the side of the
thin cylinder with relevant actions for that object. He points to the
word 'SUBTRACT', and then touch the other two cylinders, and the thin
cylinder is subtracted from the other two, producing a hole. He then
presses 'PROPERTIES' and a small menu of properties pops up so he can
change the colour of the cylinders-with-holes to red.

  Now he needs to add some nuts n' bolts to this construction, and
moves on to the toolbox. Now his construcion is in his way, so he
doubleclicks 'SIZE' and pushes it small. Now he has RESCALED it, not
changed it's SIZE. I.e. if he selects INFO and points to it, it will
still be 1 inch thick and 2 inch in diameter although it LOOKS
smaller. He picks up a small box labeled 'FASTENERS' and enlarges it
and opens it. Inside he finds only one bolt and one nut. He picks out
a bolt, shirnks away the box, and places the bolt in space in front of
him, and klicks 'OPEN'. Now the bolt multiplies into 8 different kinds
of bolts. He picks a torx bolt, and the other seven are automatically
closed back into the single bolt-symbol, and autoshrunk back to the
fasteners box. He clicks 'SIZE' and drags the bolt. This time the bolt
refuses to grow continously, since this bolt only exists in ten
different sizes. As he drags it, the bolt snaps between these
available sizes. Also, the bolt is red in some sizes, but green in
others. This symbolizes the fact that his company doesn't have the
'red' bolts in store and will have to order those, as opposed to the
'green' bolts. He selects a boltsize that looks good, and presses
'INFO'. Lets see, this bolt kan stand this and that amount of stress
before it bursts. But what was it now that this construction required?

  He taps his 'file cabinet' and clicks 'OPEN' with his left hand.
Some files pop up, and he grabs the filechunk and resizes it with the
'SIZE' button. As they grow, the headings become visible, so he can
quickly choose the one he is looking for. He rescales it into readable
size, and starts scanning the document. He stops at the word
'franticabilitism'.  What in the world is that? He points to the word
'franticabilitism', and presses the 'SIZE' button. This 'enlarges' the
word in a conceptual way, popping up a message derived from a optilink
access from Encyclopedia Galactica describing the word
'franticabilitism'. After obtaining that info he shrinks it all back
to nothing and returns to his construction. It's time to test if it
fits (it's a part of a landing gear for a Boeing-949 aircraft).  Now
where did I put my Boeing, he wonders, and starts to search at the
bottom of his toolbox....let's see, scissors, lawnmower,
pocketcalculator, ham and eggs, primitive geometry, fasteners, welds,
surface attributes...no..wait! There it is! From the bottom of his
toolbox he picks up the Boeing-949 and puts it on the table in front
of him, doubleclicks 'SIZE' and restores it to it's correct
proportions. Now it's a bit bulky to work with a full scale Boeing-949
so he simply grabs the landing gear, knocks twice on the airplane body
(this is a form of secondary selection) and presses 'HIDE'. Only the
landing gear is now visible. He installs his freshly created device,
looks at it and tries it out by rolling it on his desk. Works ok, but
it squeaks a bit, might need some oil? Well, he picks up a drawing
sheed from his file cabinet, inserts it into the landing gear, presses
'ACTION', and selects 'BUILD DRAWING' from the menu that pops up next
to the paper (each object has it's own range of actions). He pulls out
the drawing from the landing gear, and looks at it. Well, not so bad
for a few minutes work, he thinks and puts the paper back in the file
cabinet........

WHAT I'M AIMING AT with this little 'story' is to point at the need
for some 'standard' operations to perform for each object in a virtual
world. You must be able to 'open' and 'close' everything, even if
'opening' a word in a text (or, like in the example above, resizing
it) might do slightly different things then physically OPENING it.
Also, in a virtual reality SIZING of objects is importand. Both
physical, of course, but also 'virtual' sizing, just to make them
easier to handle (like the 949 in the bottom of the toolbox). Also, to
perform and ACTION with an object, that allows you to select from a
line of actions that are SPECIFIC TO THAT OBJECT! Like making a
drawing, for the drawing sheet, or subtracting it from other primitive
geometry, like the cylinder. All these things are difficult to
implement without something similar to the 'left hand keypad' I use in
the above story (although the keypad might be simulated...).

So, I propose for the 'standard' cyber gear to consist of the goggles,
the gloves (perhaps only one glove?) and a keypunch (deck?) to preform
some basic actions. Perhaps MOTION in space should be thrown down to
the keypad for those not fortunate enough to afford a bodysuit? Wow,
were getting closer and closer to the Neuromancer setup ;-)

NO, that's all for today....

/Z

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