Too Much Information

JamesDellow comes back with some comments on Virtual Reality (VR).

For me, there are several problems with VR, not least that it's still no match for Real Reality (RR). It's been hanging around for a long time now, look at the Wired article that James links to or observe the first Gartner Hype Cycle from 1995:



Game graphics have developed tremendously in the last decade. But people want to spend time in games. Most of them do not want to spend more time than they have to at work.

Paul Miller @ Intranet Benchmarking Forum points towards some applications of 3D environments @ Sun. I think that 3D VR has some very specific applications where cost or safety overrule RR experience (e.g. learning how to change the rods in a nuclear reactor, designing a new jumbo jet). For the rest of us it paradoxically provides too much information & not enough.

Too much information because most people like their virtual workspaces simple. Look at the desktop used in the typical call centre. It is spare and clean - you want a limited number of applications that you can move between. You want to point at a file & get it - you don't want to have to move your avatar to the virtual 3D filing cabinet to extract a virtual 3D form that you then drop on the floor.

Too little information because you lack smell, taste & touch - plus the fine-grained visual cues that we pick up on all the time ("blonde hair, black roots, hmmm").