That's going to change in a big way in the next year or two. Consider Xerox Corp.'s Visual Recall program. It helps search through a large collection of documents by representing them in a grid of icons stretching across a concave wall. Linear perspective makes the distant icons appear smaller, allowing more of them to show. Yet the few in front are large enough to reveal identifying data.
Users scroll the grid left and right and then click on an icon to retrieve a document.
A standard for displaying 3-D information on a Web page, it's an engaging way to help nontechies get somewhere in cyberspace. For example, a system called PhotoModeler from Eos Systems Inc. in Vancouver is being used by real estate brokers to show houses. Scanning in snapshots, they create a 3-D computer model of a house. Any computer user with a VRML browser can visit the site for a simulated walk in and around the house. One way to make people more at home in cyberspace is to show them a three-dimensional environment where they can meet one another and roam.