From: Michael Truchard <71213.3204@CompuServe.COM>
Subject: APPS: Graphical VR Cyberspace?
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1993 13:30:58 CDT


VIRTU-L


Does anyone out there know of any Graphical VR Cyberspace projects
that are currently being worked on or that are already in use?  I am
getting tired of text networks!  I would like to walk up and post this
message on the virtual reality bulletin-board.

I believe the idea of cyberspace and its practical realization is
culminating in the mind of the VR community as a whole.  I have had so
many ideas about how to implement cyberspace just to find out that
others are comming up with these ideas simutaneously.  Many people
that I talk to seem to be just about ready to build cyberspace - just
a little better hardware and a lot of new software.  (AT@T is probably
too ready to build cyberspace - I hope the people get to it before
they do!)

I realize that there are many VR systems in use, but none that I have
seen comes close to what I think of cyberspace.  To me the actual
display of cyberspace should not be tied to a specific piece of
hardware.  If you have a VR helmet and power glove you should be able
to use them, but if you don't you should be able to display the
graphics on your mono-screen and use your mouse.  It becomes real
cyberspace when people have access to it - this means being able to
render the stuff on low end machines.  I also imagine that every
computer connected should contribute its processing power to
cyberspace in a similar way that nodes in internet contribute to the
network.  Virtual worlds could reside on different computers and could
be connected by the network.  Objects within those worlds would also
be contributed by different computers.  I could build a robot on my
machine and send it off into cyberspace.  All interaction with my
robot would be processed on my machine.

Just to have something to do with my ideas I have been working on a
3-D game that allows multiple players on multiple machines to interact
with each other and with the toys that I throw into the world.  My
graphics are so simplistic that true VR developers would laugh.
(Light source - what's that?)  But I am not interested in graphics.
More fasinating to me is the interaction between objects.  I could
throw a ball, watch it bounce down a stairs and knock down a lamp
angering the robot cat that lives there.  (I made a virtual cat
modeled after my own real cat - concept: virtual personality) I could
also plant flowers and watch them seed and spread.  My game will have
the capability of having worlds and objects distributed on different
machines.  There is no server/client concept - all machines are equal.
But unfortunately, I have run into so many networking and parallel
processing issues that I became interested in seeing how others were
handling these problems.

If anyone has any answers, questions or comments I would love to hear
them.

I would also be very interested in joining up with anyone on creating
cyberspace.  (I am an object oriented C programmer working on the Macintosh.
I currently do contract work in Eugene, Oregon).