Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!dali.cs.montana.edu!milton!kirlik@chmsr.gatech.edu
From: kirlik@chmsr.gatech.edu (Alex Kirlik)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Can displays be "too real"?
Message-ID: <9683@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Oct 90 18:28:22 GMT
References: <9638@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: Center for Human-Machine Systems Research
Lines: 49
Approved: hitl@hardy.u.washington.edu



In article <9638@milton.u.washington.edu> dmark@acsu.buffalo.edu (David Mark) wr
ites:
>
 Comments on the beneficial role of abstraction deleted.
>
>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?
>
I, too, am interested in this issue, but for a slightly different reason.
Although any attempt to characterize a young field like VR is certainly
going to be dangerous, I will say that most VR research is addressing mainly
the phenomenological aspects of perception, as opposed to the cognitive 
aspects (I realize even this distinction is far from clear).  What I am
concerned about, here, is the lack of empirical evidence that shows that
creating a feeling of "presence" or "here-now-ness" is really beneficial
from the standpoint of the *performance* of a user at a given cognitive
task.

As I am concerned with interface design and human-machine interaction in
real world systems, the reason I worry about this issue is that I suspect
that aiding the phenomenological aspects of perception through VR might cut
both ways, when it comes to actual human performance.  A pilot, for example,
might now errorneously believe that his or her left engine has flamed out,
but with VR he or she might then erroneously "fully experience" that the
left engine has flamed out. We are always going to be at the mercy of sensor
technology and hardware malfunction in human-machine systems of realistic
complexity, and given this it is not clear to me that creating felt presence
will always be beneficial.  Perhaps when extending perceptual abilities
through technology, we may actually want the person to realize he or she is
looking at information displays rather than fully experiencing the state of
the system.

My comments do not speak to the issue of VR for other purposes (such as
entertainment and other non-critical visualization tasks), but as my comments
above suggest, I am concerned about certain claims for VR made that suggest
that it is a promising solution to real-world interface design.  Felt presence
may or may not prove beneficial, and to me this issue remains wide open when
we consider actual cognitive performance.  I know of no good data that suggests
that a person actually performs better at a task when that person also reports
felt presence, but I would be very pleased to hear otherwise.

Alex 

UUCP:   kirlik@chmsr.UUCP
        {backbones}!gatech!chmsr!kirlik
INTERNET:       kirlik@chmsr.gatech.edu