Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!mcdchg!laidbak!ism.isc.com!uunet!ogicse!milton!pepke@SCRI1.SCRI.FSU.EDU From: pepke@SCRI1.SCRI.FSU.EDU (Eric Pepke) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Subject: Re: Who says what to whom (was Re: VR Protocols.) Message-ID: <9577@milton.u.washington.edu> Date: 18 Oct 90 20:50:22 GMT References: <8370@milton.u.washington <8511@milto <8842@milton.u.washington.edu> Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them Lines: 63 Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu In article <9397@milton.u.washington.edu> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: > The "danger", I think, comes from a close, but inexact, approximation of > reality. If the approximation is very good, then there will be little > dissonance with expectation. But this is also true if we create a "reality" > in which _none_ of the expected rules hold good. It is the middle case, > where things that look like they should work, don't, that causes the most > dissatisfaction. I think that the trick is correctly to identify those aspects of the world which most help us get around in it and spend most of the effort on doing the same kinds of things in VR. When we design interfaces, they should be such that the limitations can easily and quickly be learned and accepted. I have played with the VPL system, the Very Nervous System, and the Mandala system. All are very nice in different ways. But, in a very important way, my best virtual reality experience came from the video game Battle Zone. I think that there are a number of things that contributed to its success. For one thing, the model of interaction was simple and easily understandable, and one quickly got used to what one could and could not do. Where there were frustrations, such as running into a pyramid and being unable to move, they were due to constraints of the problem, not the interface. Another advantage was that the graphics were simplified to the point that they could be done fast enough to be within the human closed feedback loop tolerances of about 200 ms. There were little features that improved it as well, such as bone-conduction of the sound effects through the forehead and the "cracking" of the CRT when you got hit. But I think the fact that it provided, like most video games, an interface which is not really intuitive but is simple and predictable, was the biggest factor in its success. It is the predictibility more than the intuitiveness which lets us learn how to use the interface without thinking about every little detail. If the interface is designed so that its limitations are inherent and are likewise predictable, then much of the frustration goes away. Take the VPL system. I am beginning to think that it is a mistake to make the effector figure appear as a hand. It clearly does not behave as a hand does. To fly about in the world, you point in the direction you want to go and lower your thumb, as a child pretending to fire a pistol. This is strange. I would much rather have a specialized interface unit, which might be held in the other hand, that I can orient in the direction I want to go and then push a rocker or slider switch to go there. The limitations of one rigid object, switch clicking forward or backward, are things I can literally feel. I am not likely to expect it to do something it cannot. On the other hand, it may be that after spending a few hours in the system, all of those funninesses go away. I won't know until I get my Power Glove interface and homebrew goggles together, if I ever manage it. Eric Pepke INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET: pepke@fsu Florida State University SPAN: scri::pepke Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052 BITNET: pepke@fsu Disclaimer: My employers seldom even LISTEN to my opinions. Meta-disclaimer: Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.