Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!hlab From: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu (Human Int. Technology Lab) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: Re: Cyberspace, VR, a summary of what I've seen so far... Message-ID: <8129@milton.u.washington.edu> Date: 25 Sep 90 18:39:58 GMT References: <7624@milton.u.washington.edu> <7660@ <7678@milton.u.washington.edu> Organization: Tektronix Inc. Lines: 63 Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu In article <7988@milton.u.washington.edu> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul D olan) writes: > Compare the truely limited real motion > of the Disney starbus ride with the tremendous roller coaster sensation > the intense visuals and minor motion cues provide. "Minor" motion cues? Those aren't so minor, Kent, because they're *acceleration" cues. That's exactly what would be missing if you don't have the Mary Martin flight harness. Think back on the Disney ride, and you`ll remember times when you woudl have sworn you were accelerating forward at nearly half a gee. It wasn't the visuals that did that, it was the fact that the hydraulic pillars holding up the cabin had gone into a backward-leaning position, so that you were lying on you rback, interpreting the resultant weight as forward acceleration. > To generalize, don't overdesign the early systems to provide every possible > sensory input. Start by trusting the body/memory/imagination/wishful > thinking to provide the parts that are hard to simulate if you only do the > easy ones well. This is good advice in any situation, but my own opinion is that there's a certain minimal functionality you need. That probably does not include force-feedback, but, again in my opinion, does include heads-up display. > > Similarly, moving a joystick rather than ones head to look left or right > may seem klutzy at first, and seem to demand the CRT be replaced by 3D > head motion sensors and projection goggles in the initial design, but try > the cheap, easy photo-optic goggles and interlaced left and right 3D views > CRT screen solution, push it to the max, and see how the user adapts before > deciding you have to invent the direct neural interface just because it's > "the techy thing to do". ;-) Well, we've all been talking as if this was a brand-new field, and no real research had been done in it. Not true: even the NASA-Ames teleoperator work was not the first. Most of the initial work in marrying human motor-sensory sytems to computer interfaces was done by the Navy adn the Air Force, in learning how to design control systems for submarines and fighter planes. Fighters are probably the paradigmatic application at this point in time: time-critical, mission-critical (!) tasks in which information overload is a fact of life, and the system MUST allow the person controlling the system to use instinct and trained reflex rather than symbol-cognitive reasoning. Heads-up displays are necessary in new fighter designs in part because some of the job is "out there" beyond the cockpit, and can't be coaxed into coming inside and tamed into the control system, but also because it gives the display system more of the pilot's visual field to display on, without permanently blocking the rest of the world. Virtual reality has a problem even beyond that of airplane control, one first noticed in teleoperator work: the operator needs to have a sense of identity with the "operand". Having a fixed viewpoint makes that identification more difficult, and also increases the stress on the operator as she tries unconsciously to "peer around" the viewpoint. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: USE THIS ADDRESS TO REPLY, REPLY-TO IN HEADER MAY BE BROKEN! Bruce Cohen, Computer Research Lab email: brucec@tekcrl.labs.tek.com Tektronix Laboratories, Tektronix, Inc. phone: (503)627-5241 M/S 50-662, P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077