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From: broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Reference to MUD newsgroup (Was Re: Virtual Reality)
Message-ID: <11566@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 21 Nov 90 15:53:56 GMT
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[MUDs keep intruding on our consciousness.  As I told Bernie, in preparing
to post the following high-quality posting, so far as I know, there is no
systematic study of MUDs now taking place.  Until there is, I continue to
doubt their efficacy for explaining or exploring true virtual world
experiences.  However, the Group Mind may have something to say about this.
Do YOU want more discussions of existing online virtual experiences here,
or should they be dealt with in the specific conferences set up to discuss
particular applications (like MUDs)? -- Bob Jacobson, Moderator]


In article <10922@milton.u.washington.edu> BKort@BBN.COM (Barry Kort) writes:
>...MUDs.  These network-based cyberworlds are accessible to anyone who has 
>access to the Internet.

True!

>So if you can read and post to Netnews, you can 
>probably gain access to MUDs as well.

Not *quite* true... a lot of people receive news over a uucp link, rather than
being on the Internet directly.  Anyone who's not sure can just try giving
the command "telnet"... if it exists, you're fine.  If not, you're (probably)
out of luck.

>For information on getting started, read net.rec.mud.  

Actually, it's rec.games.mud (at least, on our site!)

Having followed discussions in both this group and rec.games.mud, I can suggest
that people look at MUDs for some ideas of how virtual reality might be set up
and administered.  You might also discover some of the problems you run into;
let me explain, and perhaps give sci.virtual-worlds people a quick intro to what
a MUD is all about.

Anyone who's played a text-based adventure game (e.g. Adventure or Zork) has
a pretty good idea of what a MUD "feels" like.  The great innovation that
makes a MUD different from Adventure or Zork is that multiple players can be
wandering around the same environment simultaneously, communicating with each
other and working together to solve puzzles, make discoveries, or just chat.

The second important innovation (which I believe is credited to James Aspnes)
is the idea of *extensibility*.  The players can not only wander around exist-
ing rooms, but can build new rooms, create new objects, and generally work to
create a richer, more complex environment.

This is where the biggest problem facing MUDs originates; since a MUD grows
more sophisticated and complex as people from all over the world build and
create, it also outgrows the ability of the machine it's hosted on to handle
the huge of amount of data involved.

I'm in the process of designing a distributed MUD, that would be implemented
across a group of machines rather than a single machine; I'm also keeping
in mind the kind of extensibility needed to allow a visual (rather than
strictly text-based) model of reality.

An important aside: virtual reality already exists; it's our *means of
accessing it* that is growing more sophisticated.  Consider the following
examples of virtual reality:

        - the net
        - telephone "party lines"
        - MUDs
        - Internet Relay Chat

In all cases, people from all over the physical world can come together in
a "virtual" world to communicate, discuss and work together.

All of these have certain basic elements in common, and all of them provide
(in some form or another) access to a "reality" that exists independently of
the physical world.

Adding a visual component to that interaction will make it much more effective,
and much more productive, that any of the above examples.

-- 
        Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept
        Mail: broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu OR broehl@watserv1.UWaterloo.ca
        BangPath: {allegra,decvax,utzoo,clyde}!watmath!watserv1!broehl
        Voice:  (519) 885-1211 x 2607 [work]