From: syzygy@rock.concert.net (Andrew B Smith -- Personal Account)
Newsgroups: alt.uu.virtual-worlds.misc
Subject: here's an idea
Date: 27 Jan 93 04:33:33 GMT
Organization: CONCERT-CONNECT -- Public Access UNIX


With all this talk of virtual reality (VR) and the waves of the
future as related to VR, it has occured to me to ask whether any-
body has thought to apply standards to the idea...

I realize that it is probably too early to seriously apply any
standards to VR programming, but it might be nice to get a head
start on defining what issues will concern VR programmers.

I've been thinking a great deal on the realistic approach to
bringing VR to the everyday houshold.  It seems to me that one
of the strongest advantages any VR application would be total
compatibility with the majority of other VR applications.  For
those of us familiar with XWindows on a workstation, we know 
just how nice it can be to run a graphical application from some-
where else as if it were on your own machine.  Similar features 
should be available to VR applications in the future.  To acheive
this end, it will be necessary to build compatibility into VR worlds.
Since we are talking about very data and processing intensive
programming here, any adjustments for compatibility should be
minimal.

I would like to mention that I am in no way attempting to define
a VR standard, I would merely like to get everybody thinking on
all the fine points of VR.  If anybody feels that I have left any-
thing out of my tentative outline (see below), I would love to hear
it.  If there is a lot of feedback, I'll post a summary of every-
body's ideas.

For my outline below, please keep in mind that any standards would
have to start small and grow increasingly more complex as the hard-
ware grows capable of handling more.  Again, this is purely tentative.

VR Standards (tentative ver 1.0) -- issues to be considered
-----------------------------------------------------------

1.  Basic Software and hardware concerns
   - frames/sec of animation
   - degrees of view (horizontal and vertical)
   - # of colors (the first standard could just have black, white and
     grey shades)
   - lighting model and shading
   - vision curvature for peripheral vision
   - for remote VR applications, what kinds of protocols / hardware
     ie. tcp/ip with ethernet on an IRIS
   - goggle type (polarized lcd, color filter etc)
   - sound support and dimensionality (should the sound be louder in
     the left ear if the source is to your virtual left..?)
   - spectrum support.  Should the VR be able to simulate infra-red &
     ultra violet.  
   - light beam creation.  In reality, beams are visible by light
     reflecting off of suspended particles which obviously won't
     be present in VR.

2.  Physics
   - what is an atom?  Is it an object or does an object consist of
     atoms (specifically, what is the most basic building block in
     a VR environment).  
   - gravity.
   - wind/air pressure effects
   - heat
   - general forces of attraction/repulsion (ex. magnetics)

3.  Object characteristics
   - elasticity
   - mass/weight
   - reflectivity/color/lumosity
   - surface texture

4.  Environment
   - light source
   - terrain mapping (if a terrain is being used, how is it stored
     and displayed)
   - scale

I'm sure that there are many things I've forgotten or overlooked.  As
I said before, any input is welcome.  Some things, like standard hand
motions for actions (ex. pointing to move in a direction) could be
standardized very early, while things like terrain mapping would 
obviously take a bit of time.  I hope I've given you all some food
for thought,

andy. (syzygy@rock.concert.net)