Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ogicse!milton!bro@eunomia.rice.edu
From: bro@eunomia.rice.edu (Douglas Monk)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Can displays be "too real"?
Message-ID: <1990Oct22.220652.4132@rice.edu>
Date: 22 Oct 90 22:06:52 GMT
References: <9638@milton.u.washington.edu> <9682@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: Rice University, Houston
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In article <9682@milton.u.washington.edu> danorman@UCSD.EDU (Donald A Norman-UCS
D Cog Sci Dept) writes:
[VR can be better than real :]
>[...] reality is harder to deal with
>than pre-processed information, especially symbolic pointers, line
>drawings, and cartoons.

Part of the fascination with VR may be the violations of real constraints that
it makes possible: adolescent power fantasies take on a whole new dimension.
In a real sense, some of the attraction that the movie "Who Framed Roger 
Rabbit?" had for me was the interaction of "real" characters and "virtual"
cartoon characters.

But the most fascinating thing of all was the "virtual" reality of Toontown:
an entire environment in which none of the laws of "reality" necessarily
applied, but in which humans could still meaningfully perceive, act, and
react.

The "cartoon" is used to *simplify* reality, and to *supplant* portions of it,
and to do so in a cost-effective way. Taken to extremes, the simplification
and supplanting would render the environment *useless* from a human viewpoint
(except perhaps for aesthetic concerns).

On the other extreme, if one spends tremendous amounts of time and money
*duplicating* reality, VR is a waste of both: it would be cheaper and more
efficient just to do whatever you needed to do *in reality*.

The true practical benefits from VR come from the *"cartoon"* aspects of it, 
not from the *"real"* aspects: do it cheaper or easier (simplification) or 
do the impossible (supplanting natural law).

(Aesthetics==Art as goal is another discussion.)

Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu)

Disclaimer: These views are mine, not necessarily my organization's.