From: Hugh DAVID Subject: Re: DESIGN: Is there really such a thing as text-based VR? Date: 12 Mar 1996 17:27:14 GMT Organization: Eurocontrol From: Hugh DAVID It is generally accepted that there are different ways of thinking. Some people are extremely visual, and tend to think in images. Others are primarily verbal, and think in words. (Although there are statistical gender and culture links, there is no reason to suppose that one way of thinking is 'better' than another.) I am, among other things, a statistician, a group notoriously lacking in visual sense. (It actually helps not visualise if you are treating n-dimensional geometry.) My wife is a painter, and finds it difficult not to visualise things. When we go out together, we multiply our pleasure at what we meet. Although VR practically is concerned with the visual and tactile world, it is short-sighted to neglect the other side. George Lucas produced something unique in 'StarWars', using special effects to carry you away. Jane Austen, with a quill-pen and a bottle of ink,(and a rather poor grasp of spelling) did the same thing, in a different way. It took about 30 years for cinema to go from 'how marvellous that we can do this' to conveying messages the traditional 'scribbling and shouting' could not. If we can produce works in VR that have something more than novelty by the turn of the century, I'll be delighted. If we can produce the equivalent of Barbara Cartland I'll be surprised.