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From: kevino@fs0.ee.ubc.ca (kevin o'donnell)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Can displays be "too real"?
Message-ID: <9679@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Oct 90 06:31:11 GMT
References: <9638@milton.u.washington.edu>
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In article <9638@milton.u.washington.edu>, dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark) w
rites:
> An aerial photograph is more "realistic" than a map.  If we pushed
> display of vertical views of a city toward greater and greater "reality",
> then the displays would look more and more like colored airphotos.  But
> it is widely believed that a road map is better for finding one's way around
> in a city than would be an airphoto, even and airphoto with street names
> overlain.  The utility of the road map in such situations stems from the
> fact that it is a *selective* representation of reality.  Roads are emphasized
,
> and most other features are suppressed.  In fact, it may be claimed that
> this selection, symbolization, and simplification is the essence of
> cartography.
> 
> So to rephrase my original question, has the Virtual Reality community
> addressed the issue of how real the presentation should be, and when the
> presentation to the user should be simplified and selective?
> 

The idea is to make the presentation variable depending on the data
and on the use the user wants to put it to.  As you suggest, both the 
above formats could be usefull in different situations.  The amount of
(real world) realism would depend on whether it was needed.

I would guess that initially, it would be up to the user to indicate,
in some fashion, what data he wants to look at, what attributes are of 
interest and in what manner they should be displayed.  An intelligent 
set of defaults will obviously be important. Some sort of built in AI 
to intuit what we are hunting for and modify the defaults would be great.

Lately, people have been mostly discussing intuitive navigation in VR.  
What are peoples ideas on intuitive manipulation of VR?  How best should
the user modify the manner in which the world is displayed and the data
presented?

Kevin
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|"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."       | Kevin O'Donnell         |
|There was a long silence.                     | kevino@ee.ubc.ca        |
|"I suppose," said Pooh, "that`s why he never  | U of British Columbia   |
| understands anything."                       | Vancouver, Canada       |
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