From: gay@duggan.enet.dec.com (My name is...)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: DESIGN: Doors between virtual worlds
Date: 21 Aug 92 20:18:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Aug21.194818.21500
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp. Realtime Integrator group
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu



For the virtual reality exhibit for the Computer Museum in Boston I
chose to make all the doors between universes look similar so that
people could find them easily.  I used the familiar phone booth style.
(I regret not putting in the wonderful grinding noise that the Tardis
made when it left).

On the back of the phone booth I put a picture of the place that the
portal went to (Sense8's WorldToolkit lets you grab a view of the
current scene, so I went through each door, grabbed that image, then
mapped it onto the back of the booth that got me there).

The fixed shape portal idea worked really well for the exhibit.
People figure out what the portals are right away (perhaps the big
EXIT sign over the first two they meet helps :-).  After that they
don't have any trouble finding the rest of them.  For the purposes of
the exhibit, that is good.  But it's like any standard .. kinda dull.

Now that I've had some time to sit back and reflect on what I'd like
to do differently, I think that it would be fun to build a totally
whimsical universe.  I want to have tiny doors and huge doors, I want
to have invisible doors and doors in the ground, I want to have doors
that fly around and you have to catch them (or vice versa - if you
want to stay here, RUN!  the door's trying to catch YOU!).

Of course, as soon as the sizes of doors change, then the scale of the
user has to shrink/grow as they move closer/further (or they have to
find the bottle that says DRINK ME).

My only problem with this (and all the other things, like varying
"down" according to location, etc.) is that it will be a lot of fun
for me to build, but making it fun to use will be tough.  V.r. is
already disorienting enough and hard enough for the user to figure
out, who will want to use one that is actively surreal? (virtual
surreality, I like it!)

I've got some free time coming up (several weeks with nothing
scheduled during my normal sleeping hours! (sleep?  what's THAT?)).
With luck I'll get to try some of this stuff to see how bad it really
is.  (I want a fish tank that sucks you in if you get too close - and
I like the idea of doors that go different places from different sides
- or how about random places (spinning room?)).

Now, take this to multi-user v.r. and you have a wonderful set of
potential tools/weapons.  I point my wand and ZAP -
        
        - you have moved in this universe (to jail or backwards or random..)
        - you are moving at a snail's pace, or you are out of control you 
          move so far each tick
        - you are upside down (or worse, spinning, keep that bag handy..)
        - your movements are reversed (you try to move forward, go back)
        - you are unbearably attractive to all objects in your vicinity so
          they all start crowding around, following you everywhere
        - You are sent to some other universe

Hey, with the trend toward using wands, maybe we'll start pulling in
concepts from fantasy (magic, powerful beings with plans of their own)
as well as from sci-fi.

"Beware the Portal-beast lest it seize your viewpoint and fling you to
a far universe whence you never shall return."  ..or something

Eben Gay

gay@bitbkt.enet.dec.com
Virtual Reality consultant
"That's the trouble with Reality. It's taken far too seriously" Emotional Fish