Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!mike@x.co.uk
From: mike@x.co.uk (Mike Moore)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: The collaborative nature of VR
Message-ID: <8514@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 2 Oct 90 18:43:22 GMT
References: <8374@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: IXI Limited, Cambridge, UK
Lines: 286
Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu




>Mike Moore (i.e. me) writes:
>>  What I'm saying is that
>> in a VR environment if we don't want people entering a room, we don't
>> even tell them it's there, they just see a blank wall (or one with
>> pictures hung on it, or whatever) and all the hacking in the world won't
>> change that fact.  For people we do want to allow in there is simply an
>> entry point, no messing around with doors just a 'transporter' machine/
>> object which moves you into the chosen room/building/area/'country',
>> wherever you intend going.

Buckaroo Banzai [wex@dali.pws.bull.com] (Hi Alan!) writes:
>Well... yes and no.  I'm extremely fond of the "new modes of interaction"
>idea.  Driving while looking in the rear-view mirror will only get us so
>far.  But on the other hand, it's extremely hard to ignore, as Meredith
>Bricken put it, the fact that we're wired for up/down, forward/backward
>one-step-at-a-time.  It's some of the most deeply learned behaviors and
>relationships we have to the world.

I agree with you entirely.  Any three dimensional virtual world will
certainly have to cope with this concept in some form.

Bruce Cohen [brucec@tekcrl.labs.tek.com] writes:
>I think this is a very limited and limiting view of the way the designer
>and inhabitants of a virtual reality interact.  The implication is that a
>world is finished and perfect construct, whose designer has considered
>every interaction possible, and knows the nature of every use to which the
>world will be put (or even most of them).  This is not the way complex
>systems are introduced in the "real world".  Often, particularly in
>systems with complex user interfaces, new interactions and new applications
>for the system come to light for years after the designer has gone on to
>other projects.

I'm sorry if I gave this impression, that was not what I meant, and I
agree with you that any system as complex as a world-wide network of
VR machines would be impossible to analyse completely.  I was looking
more from the point of view that when a new 'room' comes on-line, it is
the responsibility of the designer to ensure that only the people he
wants in are allowed in (see further below).

Bruce Cohen [brucec@tekcrl.labs.tek.com] writes:
>I view a virtual reality as very much like an interactive fiction: a
>collaboration between the designer and the inhabitants.  The designer puts
>in the basic set of objects and relationships and the inhabitants use them
>and build on them to make the reality suitable for their own purposes,
>which may or may not have been forseen by the designer.  Over time, a
>well-designed VR would evolve as the inhabitants modified and enhanced
>it.  In this context, the criteria for a good VR design are not completeness
>and fit to initial specification, as is common in systems development
>today, but internal consistency and extensibility.
>
>Wasn't it Stewart Brand who said, "We are become as gods, and damn well
>ought to learn how to be good at it"?  VR makes the designer a god, and
>ought also to confer some divinity on the inhabitants.  How else do you
>apprentice as a designer?

Yes!  I like this idea.  But it wouldn't be the only kind of environment
available.  But take another example I came across the other day (from
a famous book I borrowed of a friend over a drink for 10 minutes, so I'm
not accurate [from Mind Children by Hans Moravek]) that is basically a
school, or a VR, AI text book.  It gives you individual tuition (on a
time-sharing basis) and even allows you to interact with other students
so you can choose to learn together or on your own.  Not in a school, but
walking along an orchard path with Isaac Newton to learn about gravity
and mass, or in a train to learn about the Doppler effect, and relativity
with Einstein (or, at least, VR AI interpretations of them).  Now you
*don't* want people messing around, they have a limited set of allowable
actions.  They won't bring anything with them, and they probably won't
take objects away.  Each VR environment will have it's own set of
constraints on what can and cannot be done, and collaboration is merely
one example of one set of 'constraints'.

Buckaroo Banzai [wex@dali.pws.bull.com] writes:
>That's why I agree with the assertion
>that you can't train a cybernaut, you're going to have to breed one.

I understand what you are saying here, but, are good fighter pilots/submarine
captains trained or bred?  It is not within our instinctive make-up to
understand the complex relationships of manouevering within 3d space (as
many a fighter pilot might tell you) and these skills are most definitely
learned.  Why should manipulation of cyber-space be anymore complex (I
should hope it will be infinitely easier!)

Buckaroo Banzai [wex@dali.pws.bull.com] writes:
>One need only see the differences in adults & children using a powerglove in
>order to see the truth of this.  You and I are already too old, our brains
>too ossified.

It's not!! :-)  (At least mine isn't! :-)  You and I are into the computer
'world' and it's not just my grandmother or my parents who don't
understand it (to my genuine surprise when I first discovered).  Many
people of my/your own age group are not only confused by what's going
on, they just don't have any interest outside of what they *have* to
know to operate within their work environment.  Granted that being
exposed to technology at an early age is (like reading) a major reason
why those kids grow up knowing how to use, and how to appreciate,
technology; I would still argue that it is not a prerequisite.

Buckaroo Banzai [wex@dali.pws.bull.com] writes:
>We're trained that if we want to enter a room, we look for a
>more or less conventional entry point (door, window, chimney).  Those of us
>with slightly bent minds can accept a teleporter to get us inside.  But the
>"transporter machine" is still a door in terms of its affordances.

Agreed.  I didn't mean that the concept 'DOOR' would disappear, more that
the application of the concept would change (like the application
changed with automatic doors).  In fact, the application of the concept
could (and should) be a user defined parameter, unless specific
situations call for this to be over-ridden.  To explain my point in
this context, if I were denied access to a room by some security software,
it would be in the best interests of the software to not even inform
me of the existence of the room.  i.e. on entering an area I must
identify myself and then the software informs me of what it wants me
to know.  (see below)

>Mike Moore (i.e. me) writes:
>>   In my (humble) opinion, there isn't a need for every object to shout it's
>>   attributes at me when I enter a room.  An object is a passive item that is
>>   acted on, and, if I perform an action recognised by the object it performs
>>   an action of it's own.

Buckaroo Banzai [wex@dali.pws.bull.com] writes:
>But this begs the question.  If the objects in the room don't shout at you,
>how do you know they're there?

Uhhh.... yes... well...  I didn't explain that very well did I?  This
was to apply to all attributes *except* visual attributes.  i.e. all
objects that I am meant to see, I receive a visual description, and
all objects I am not meant to see, I don't.

Buckaroo Banzai [wex@dali.pws.bull.com] writes:
>How do you know what you can do with 
>them?

How do I know how to breath?  How do I know how to talk?  How do I know
what to do with a book?  It is either intuitive knowledge, experiential
(is there any such word?) knowledge, or received knowledge. i.e. I know
because I know, I know because I've experimented around a bit, or I know
because I was taught.

>Mike Moore (i.e. me) writes:
>> Something else I'd like to start a discussion on is the apparent necessity
>> we have of modelling the real world.  I believe that so long as the physical
>> laws are apparent, there is no need to extend beyond this (of course, we
>> don't *really* want to accurately model somebody jumping off the golden
>> gate bridge!).  Familiar objects are already changing in the real world,
>> push-button phones as opposed to rotary phones, digital display watches
>> as opposed to analogue display.  The virtual reality would begin to alter
>> these 'familiar' objects in the same way that digital electronics has
>> already altered the real world examples I've given.  I'm currently thinking
>> about what might be the most spectacular changes, but the 'door' argument
>> above is a good enough example to begin with.

Buckaroo Banzai [wex@dali.pws.bull.com] writes:
>See above for a partial answer to this.  I'll also recommend again my two
>favorite papers on this topic:
> 
>        Smith, Randall B.  "Experiences with the Alternate Reality Kit: An
>        Example of the Tension Between Literalism and Magic," CHI+GI'87
>        Conference Proceedings, April 1987.
> 
>and
> 
>        Fairchild & Gullichsen.  "From Modern Alchemy to a New Renaissance,"
>        MCC Technical Report HI-400-86, December, 1986.

At the risk of appearing to be really thick (which, imho, I'm not, honest :-)
do you have any idea where I might be able to locate these in the UK?

>"Politics is Comedy plus Pretense."
"Politics is what happens when you have more than one person."

Bruce Cohen [brucec@tekcrl.labs.tek.com] writes:
>The key phrase here is "would begin to alter", implying gradual change.  As
>I said above, I expect any good VR to evolve; I suspect our ideas of what
>to expect in a VR designed for a given application area will also evolve.
>Likewise, the class of kinds of model represented in our VR's will expand
>over time, slowly at first, perhaps, but it will happen.  The change is
>likely to be incremental, as VR designers take a baseline "real-world" VR
>and modify a few attributes to make it more exotic, perhaps just removing
>gravity, or making light work by flowing out from the eyes to the things we
>want to look at.
> 
>There are several reasons for starting with something as much like the real
>world as is practical for the level of computer power and the complexity of
>the I/O devices we have available:
> 
>    1) The real world is the only example we have of a physically-based
>       world all of whose perceptible attributes are related in a way which
>       makes that world self-consistent, i.e., it's already been debugged.

Eeek!  Really?  Last I heard (oh, my memory!) some mathematician at
MIT had proved the universe started from nothing (really!).  It went
something like, if nothing exists for an infinite time, an infinite
number of events will take place, one of those possible events is the
spontaneous creation of matter.  He then went on to do a lot of very
difficult (to me!) math to prove it.  This says to me that the whole
universe is just one monumental bug!  :-) :-) :-) (but the MIT
mathematician bit is the truth!)

For a (slightly) more serious reply.

  1)  The universe (as we know it) is consistent only on a macro level.
      Half of the study in nuclear physics is currently revolving
      around Quanta (i.e. the *probability* that if cause A occurs
      effect B will seen rather than effect C).

  2)  To model the real-world we would need to model the non-perceptible
      parts of the world as well.  i.e.  Solar radiation (non-perceptible,
      at least without instruments) acts on the upper atmosphere
      (non-perceptible, unless you happen to be there) and the Magnetosphere
      (non-perceptible) to produce the Aurora Borealis, which *is*
      perceptible.

      This is a lot of modelling.  And for what?  Do we even *want* an
      Aurora Borealis in our VR environment?  Like, do we want to allow
      the odd idiot to jump of the Golden Gate Bridge?

>    2) We know how humans react to real-world stimuli to a large extent,
>       which means we can measure how well our models match what humans
>       expect, i.e., we have a baseline to work from.

In so far as it is a proof for a model of reality that you have built, yes
I agree.  But, as above, is this what we want?

>    3) There has been a *VERY* large amount of work done in simulating
>       real-world processes and displaying real-world-like objects on
>       computers.  This gives us a head-start in building our prototype
>       systems.  AS an engineer, it's always been my policy to build on
>       other people's work as much as possible: I represent perhaps 30
>       person-years of potential effort at best and there are
>       person-millennia worth of research and development out there waiting
>       to be used.

Again, I agree.  But as an engineer, you would realise that modelling
the effects of radiation from plutonium on tin is completely irrelevant
to modelling the effects of wind on a building.  These 'real-life'
simulations are *very* specific, and don't even pretend to tackle the
problems involved in interaction.  Therefore, as I might be explaining
a bit better by now, we do agree; but I envisage people moving from
environment to environment, each with it's own constraints (it's own
laws of gravity, motion, dimensionality, etc...).

>    4) Moving from the real world to a similar VR doesn't require a large
>       cognitive leap, or much training, on the part of the user.  In the
>       early stages of research this makes it easier for users to evaluate
>       the quality and nature of the VR they inhabit.  As a user gets more
>       experienced, she'll be better equipped to go on to more exotic
>       worlds. Right now, we don't have any experienced users.

True, but when computers hit the market for the first time, there were
very few experienced users.  When cars hit the market for the first time,
no one could drive.  People *do* learn (when motivated).

>    5) VR designers need some experience too.  Working incrementally from a
>       robust, well-constructed, "real-world" model is a good way to get
>       that experience.

Hmmm....  I see what's happening.  You are working on the assumption that
VR will *start* with a realistic 'real-world' reality (hey! that's good!)
whereas I see us starting with nothing (or very close to nothing) and
working up to a realistic 'real-world' reality.  I must admit, I think
that my view is more realistic :-) <groan>  But please explain more of
what you are thinking, I feel as though there's a huge chasm I've
missed somewhere.  Why do you believe we'll start at realism and work
down?

>    6) I suspect we'll learn more about what we can do to modify VR models
>       from letting the VR inhabitants mess around with the rules than any
>       other way.  That means starting with a baseline, and giving users
>       the tools to modify it incrementally.  Along the way, we have to
>       learn how to reconcile conflicting world-views as well.

Now this I don't understand.  From your point of view, if it is a good
model of reality, how is it possible to have conflicting world-views
(other than psychologically).  From my point of view, every gets there
own individual world view, just the same as you get your own individual
copy of this article.  Please elaborate.

-- 
---
Mike Moore
mike@x.co.uk or mike@ixi-limited.co.uk
Usual and obvious disclaimers... etc