Re: Floors as context and frames of reference

Daniel Robert Goldman (dgoldman@CS.Stanford.EDU)
Wed, 9 Nov 1994 14:34:46 -0800 (PST)


In a fit of madness, Jed Lengyel blathered:

> Each floor section gives a local 2D coordinate frame. The edge links
> (neighbor pointers) are connections between neighboring coordinate
> frames. Navigation is reduced to local 2D motions separated by
> "jumps" between coordinate frames. These jumps may be imperceptible
> if the frames are continuous. Or a jump may require a position change
> (either a step, a leap, or a teleportation depending on the distance
> to be bridged.)

While I understand the architectural metaphor here, it may be too
constraining for all applications. There may always be environments
without floors, or possibly even without up vectors.

Perhaps we should think instead of 'preferred pathways,' by which I
mean a suggested path of travel and (optionally) orientation along
that path. Such a path could either be a line, or an oriented plane.
This leaves the semantics rather wide open: A simple browser might
choose to stay only on the preffered pathways; a more elaborate
browser might have a 'pull' towards preferred pathways; or a browser
might simply choose to ignore the preferred pathways at the user's
request. Similarly, a browser might display the pathways, or they
might be invisible.

I think of this as a more general 'roadmap' to virtual environments.

(Introductions, since this is my first posting: My name is Dan Goldman.
I'm a first year Masters in CS at Stanford University. My background
is in computer graphics, and I work as a freelance graphics programmer
and technical director for digital effects. I'm currently researching
videoconferencing for collaborative research.

Visit http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~dgoldman/dgoldman.html for
more.)