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From: jim@baroque.stanford.edu (James Helman)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Hardware and VR (Was Re: Cray-Connection etc.)
Message-ID: <1991Apr4.062018.18839@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 4 Apr 91 02:49:30 GMT
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu (Human Int. Technology Lab)
Organization: Human Interface Technology Lab, Univ. of Wash., Seattle.
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Approved: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu



I actually thought the Cray/CM discussion was exposing some valuable
lines of thought.  Good things come out of debates, even if they get a
little, (but not too) heated.  It's clear that people from different
backgrounds have different conceptions of VR applications.  Seeing
these different perspectives is instructive.  While I don't share
Alan's thought on many of these issues, I do on getting down to brass
tacks and discussing details of hardware, bandwidths, computation
requirements.  Speculative ideas, philosophy, metaphor, neural
implants all have a place, but so do people debating whether numerical
simulation a big part of VR and what architectures are good for what
applications.  "Internal characteristics" aren't tedious from my
perspective, they're essential to understanding how VR will move
from a reseach topic to real world applications.

-jim



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