From: Mike Bevan Subject: Re: MISC: VR thoughts Date: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 19:39:25 +0000 Mark Pflaging writes (referring to an earlier comment by Bob Jacobson): >Bob is 100% correct about "VR" being known as things other than "VR" >now VR in all its technological forms is certainly finding practical applications nowadays. Five years ago I struggled to find good applications stories for each issue of VR NEWS. In the past year or so the position has improved quite dramatically, across a wide range of industries and markets, notably manufacturing (conceptualisation, design and prototyping, production planning, marketing, training, installation and maintenance planning, all based around 'virtual products'), medical, construction, heritage, and many others. In discussing their applications with end users in the USA and Europe I find in general that they have no difficulty whatsoever with using the term "Virtual Reality" as identifying the new generation of MMI and its associated technologies and procedures they are now working with. Of course they continue to use familiar terms such as CAD, simulation, modelling, 3D graphics, also. The global popularity of the generic terms "VR" and "Virtual Reality" against all other contenders has never been higher. This can be tested quite easily - for example by using a web search engine to rate the various terms. The following table shows the comparative number of hits registered by Alta Vista today - the first column results from setting the search period as the last ten years, and the second column is for the past year: VR/Virtual Reality 351929 (82%) 211351 (86%) Virtual World/s 48099 (11%) 22317 ( 9%) Virtual Environment/s 23076 ( 5%) 8956 ( 4%) Synthetic Environment/s 1783 1119 Artificial Reality 1651 840 Total 426538 244583 We regularly perform comparisons such as these across a wide range of scientific, technical, trade magazine and news databases, and the picture presented by this table is what we find pretty much everywhere. Another test is to search the world's patents databases on these various terms. Try http://patents.uspto.gov/patbib_index.html for US patents, which today produced the following: VR/Virtual Reality 756 (87%) Virtual World/s 30 Virtual Environment/s 58 Synthetic Environment/s 2 Artificial Reality 27 Total 873 In searching the Japanese and European patents databases (which are not freely accessible via the web) periodically, we no longer bother with terms other than VR/Virtual Reality, because the hit rate is negligible, and any hits are also invariably caught by VR/Virtual Reality. We also perform these searches on many of the new terms which are emerging as labels for VR-enabled applications - virtual prototyping, virtual manufacturing, etc. We do this in the normal course of our news and features research, and to ensure that the various events we organise are given names and content themes which are in sympathy with general market usage. There is absolutely no quantitative evidence in the literature and databases of general antipathy to the use of the word 'virtual' in such constructions. It strikes me from this correspondence that some members of the worldwide VR community who do not yet subscribe to VR NEWS might perhaps benefit from doing so, at least for a while. A visit to our soon-to-be-upgraded website (www.vrnews.com) will reveal that a 3-month free trial is currently on offer for anyone unfamiliar with our publication. Regards Mike Bevan Editor - VR NEWS [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Commercial postings are offered on this newsgroup as a public service. Their appearance here does not indicate endorsement by the moderators or by the USENET or its administrators.]