Immersive Digital Environmets
Immersive Digital Environments (as they are betta known) can be seen as a rendering of of the meaning of virtual reality, without any reference to 'reality' being simulated. An IDE 'could' be a replica of reality, it can also be completely abstact or fantasy based - it doesn't matter. As long as the users of that environment can engage themselves within it and become absorbed in its context. The user has to feel as though they are a part of this simulated 'universe'.
Whether or not the IDE absorbs the user or not relies on a few obvious factors, for example the detail of the 3d graphics (if it's not 3d...what the hell are they thinking), the quality of the surround sound (it's gotta sound like you're actually there), it's simplicity (you don't wanna go somewhere where your overloaded with choices, and have to press multiple keys to execute a simple job), and the main factor by far is to have potential for enjoyment (that shoudl be on every game creators list, who wants someone to play their game for only a couple hours before getting bored?).
It is well known news to surfers of the bragging that is currently being done by large companies about how they have new technology under development that claim to multiply the realism factors ten fold by bringing realistic environmental effects to the players' environments - effects like wind, seat vibration and ambient lighting. I can't realisticly even consider how they are going to go about completing these missions unless they end up supplying big ass barber like chairs with them big hairdryers attatched on top to every player. And Sony are also going to attempt to do some Dr. Who stuff by aiming ultrasound waves at their players' brains to help stimulate their senses to make everything just that much more realistic. Like that old
saying "those who have some always want more, those who have more always want plenty."
Ubiquious Computing
How to start here, First there were mainframes (one computer shared by many people). Now we are in the personal computing era (person and computer staring uneasily at each other over the desktop). Next comes long awaited ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology (one person many computers). This is where technology recedes in to the background of our lives.
These people just want to live in The Jetson's era, where they eat, live and crap computer micro chips. They just can't leave pc's as pc's. They want to bring out the computers from their hibernation and in to our lives where they will reside as subtly as possible (so that we dont know they are there) but end up using them for pretty much everything we do. Pretty soon we're going to be talking to our house and saying "computer, open my bedroom door" walk in "computer, close my bedroom door."
Ubiquitous computing is pretty much the opposite of virtual reality I guess. Where in virtual rality we more or less go in to the computers world and live there, in ubicomputing the computers comes out and lives in our world. This is a very difficult integration of human factors, computer science, engineering and social sciences.
What scientists basically want to do is the way electric motors dissappeared to the background of everyday life, they want to make a future where mobile computational devices will be similarly transparent. Scientists are working on integrating computer functions in to everyday life, loften in an invisible way - I hope. They plan on using small/big, expensive/inexpensive, wired.wireless computer devices and connect them to a huge computer. They want to have screens built in to our walls, sofas, fridges and even sprinklers. Personally I don't like this, they've reached so far pass the limit that they've bought Big Brother in to our homes to spy on us implicitly.
Moving away from household ubicomps, we can realise that there are other forms of this being created (which I think can benifit every artist our there...in due time). Though there are many ubicomp devices being created out there, my most favoured one is being built by Xerox Parc scientists called a Tab which is 1"-6" in length.
These people think that they hold the remote control which controls evolution. They jes can't leave it on play, there always gotta be a group that presses fast forward because they jes can't wait.
NOTE: MPK is an application programming interface (API) designed to help software developers meet the demands of these new immersive environments. This product enables the application to take advantage of the scalability provided by additional pipes and other scalable graphics hardware, as well as to support immersive environments.
Tabs are created to function as a terminal rather than a PDA. It also has a stylus for human/computer interface, scientists are currently working on a script called Unistroke to help understand all methods & forms of human character input (it uses infra red networks for communication). I think it's design emphasises communication for two reason; first of all wireless communication, which is critical for mobile computing. It allows you to connect seamlessly to info infrastructures which are built from existing WAN. And secondly (more importantly) the physical size of this device. It's idea was to enable researchers to carry it with them throughout the day - this places a slight complication on network covering & battery life.
Since the Tab has constant connectivity, it's where abouts will always be known.
The way this Tab thing works is it connects to a remote host (e.g. your pc), then you just work on your pc via the Tab (using the Parc Tab IR pocket network communication). Once an app has started running, it takes cntrol of the Tab. Any pen or button events on the Tab are sent to the active app via the agent. AND ONLY ONE APP IN USE AT A TIME.
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