What I'd like to see here

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4 total messages Started by BECKSA Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:41

#25

Author: BECKSA
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 20:41

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==============================================================================
I am just a measily role-player, but I'd like to throw in my two pence about

this newsgroup.  As a role-player, one of my greatest delights is travelling ar
ound the international computer links (the net), aswell as being able to do
some very strange things such as pretend to be a squirrel.

What I'd like to see is sci-fi readers and computer-enthusiasts compiling ideas
about what's going to be possible, say, 10 years from now.  I mean, anything's
got to be better than the crappy VR we can play at the moment!  Apparently, the
 US military are developing some really cool VR machines for fighter pilots to
use.  Does anyone know anything more about this?  I'd also be interested on hea
ring perhaps some medical/electronics ideas about neural jacks.  Are they a pos
sibility?


These are just my ideas, but I think that this group has a lot of potentially w
onderful discussions.  Anyone care to throw the first stone?


Sally  (um, I haven't got a signiture.  Never mind)

Re: What I'd like to see here

#26

Author: Brooks Cutter
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 03:23

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>What I'd like to see is sci-fi readers and computer-enthusiasts compiling 
>ideas about what's going to be possible, say, 10 years from now.  

My mind swims with the possibilities...  As for the pure-entertainment
side, I forsee the arrival of complex MUDS where people can explore and
interact in Scenarios from the middle ages to the west in the 1800's to
future space adventures...  (Just had to throw that out after noting the
use of role-player...)

As for the present ... for entertainment... I'm curious if there are any
attentive (pairs of) eyes out there with experience with Fractals in 3
dimensions...  A time consuming portion of bringing Virtual Reality to
mass acceptance is creating huge amounts of data representing virtual
worlds.  I've read about use of fractals to generate mountains, clouds,
etc ... but I haven't read/heard of any work on exploring Fractals in
three dimensions...

I'd imagine (*hope*) given a small enough display, a powerful processor 
and a simplistic algorithm that this WOULD be possible...  Perhaps something
simple enough to work on low end HMD's like the Sega 3D glasses...
(I have no experience with these so I don't know if this is possible...?)

I've used fractint numerous times ... and enjoy zooming to note the detail
and recurring patterns...  Anyone care to comment what it would take to
FLY through a fractal?  Look around in 360 degrees...?

[I assume there aren't many checking this newsgroup *yet*, but I've
been too lazy to lookup the submission information for sci.virtual-worlds...
Let's see what type of interest this does or doesn't generate...]


-- 
Brooks Cutter    (I: bcutter@pdnis.paradyne.com)
                 (U: ...uunet!pdn!pdnis!bcutter)
Unix System Administrator, Information Services
        AT&T Paradyne, Largo Florida

Re: What I'd like to see here

#27

Author: David Johnson
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 17:25

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>
>Brooks Cutter writes
>As for the present ... for entertainment... I'm curious if there are any
>attentive (pairs of) eyes out there with experience with Fractals in 3
>dimensions...  A time consuming portion of bringing Virtual Reality to
>mass acceptance is creating huge amounts of data representing virtual
>worlds.  I've read about use of fractals to generate mountains, clouds,
>etc ... but I haven't read/heard of any work on exploring Fractals in
>three dimensions...

It isn't clear what you mean by this - these fractal datasets are 3D, and
any exploration of them (do you mean viewing of them) would be no different
than any other dataset you could look at in a HMD.  The basic problem would 
be that since fractals depend on a lot of detail for their beauty, you might

If by explore you mean the creation and use of 3D fractal datasets, like
I said, they are already 3D.  Although, some would be easier to use in
today's VR equipment then others.  For example, clouds tend to be a "slice"
of a 4D fractal, and are volumetric data whereas the mountains are surface
representations and thus more amenable to display on a polygon-based
graphics engine.

david

Re: What I'd like to see here

#28

Author: Bruce Caruthers
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1993 18:26

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In article <1993Jan22.032326.15208@pdn.paradyne.com> bcutter@paradyne.com
(Brooks Cutter) writes:
[...]
>
>I've used fractint numerous times ... and enjoy zooming to note the detail
>and recurring patterns...  Anyone care to comment what it would take to
>FLY through a fractal?  Look around in 360 degrees...?

        A friend and I developed a system last semester through which
a fractally-generated, lighted, gouraud shaded (easily texture mapped
or volumetrically textured) planet (hooks are in for eventual
expansion to planetary systems) could be flown through interactively
in real-time, with the landscape being generated on-the-fly, based on
field-of-view clipping and projected viewing area, to try for maximum
performance.  (i.e. minimal wasted drawing effort).  We hope to have
a paper on it published in SIGGRAPH '94 Proceedings.
	It has full flight controls (no physics for flight, though,
which leads to some interesting maneuvers!) and can adapt itself to
run realtime on most 4D series IRISes, or run slower with a higher
level of detail (you can change the frame rate while flying) and is
currently being modified to take full advantage of multi-processor
machines.  It would not be too hard to port this system to another
graphics platform, as it is mostly (C++) processor-intensive code.
        We hope to eventually (when he gets out of his ROTC
commitment, and after I get a job [and hence a real computer, or
continue to have access to such]) further develop this system to read 
values from a database and display them realtime, using our clipping
and level-of-detail determination algortihms.

        
        -bkc
        (along with Chris Williams '92 and our advisor Pat Hanrahan)

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
bkc@Princeton.EDU   Bruce Caruthers '93   Princeton University   bkc@Sgi.COM
	"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear
	 never beginning to live."		-- Marcus Aurelius

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