Nature and Cyber space

Author(s):  
Michael Heim

In March 1993 at the SCI-ARC School of Architecture in Los Angeles, a student posed a question to Jaron Lanier, the famous entrepreneur or Virtual Reality. “How,” the student asked, “will VR enhance architecture.” The stocky genius smiled, ran a hand through dangling dreadlocks, and responded enthusiastically: “VR allows us to embellish computer-generated buildings with wonderful enhancements. Users can decorate electronic environments with dazzling colors and sign them with fun designs.” Lanier went on to say that the physical dwellings of the future would probably be cheap, dull, unadorned shelters generated by robot factories to put no-frills roofs over the heads of an overpopulated humanity. To compensate for the squalid physical surroundings, VR would provide habitations for interactive personal expression and aesthetic enjoyment. Lanier described a future in which cyberspace offers solace for the loss of natural, livable, environmental space. Lanier’s provocative mix of enthusiasm and pessimism supports many critics who attack cyberspace as a fatal form of escape. Chapter 2 showed us some of the critics who stand on the ground of naive realism. For them, virtual identities diminish physical identities. If we look, in fact, more closely at the naïve realists, we find an anxiety about the physical ground on which they stand. The firm ground the critics feel themselves standing on actually covers an underlying sinkhole. The nature to which the critics appeal has in recent years been threatened. A large cavity gapes in the human attachment to nature. Naïve realists want to protect reality from cyberspace, but they are not so sure about how deeply we are still attached to nature. Virtual reality seems to wean us from spontaneous affection toward mother nature where our birthright seems to shrink more every day. Is VR a consolation for the lost charms of natural things? Isn’t such a cyberspace a grand delusion, an electronic Tower of Babel? Is virtual reality an escapist opium for blocking the pain of planetary loss? Many of the metaphors we use today for computers suggest escapism. The “net” and the “web” are metaphors. We can be caught by these metaphors if we’re not careful.

Leonardo ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kirschenbaum

This paper documents an interactive graphics installation entitled Lucid Mapping and Codex Transformissions in the Z-Buffer. Lucid Mapping uses the Virtual Reality Modeling Language to explore textual and narrative possibilities within three-dimensional (3D) electronic environments. The author describes the creative rationale and technical design of the work and places it within the context of other applications of 3D text and typography in the digital arts and the scientific visualization communities. The author also considers the implications of 3D textual environments on visual language and communication, and discriminates among a range of different visual/ rhetorical strategies that such environments can sustain.


Author(s):  
Huiping Guo ◽  
Lin Zhu ◽  
Fengxin Yan

The web teaching platform based on virtual reality technique is a challenge to the traditional teaching mode and a necessity with the development and maturity of information technologies. Based on the easily made and operated VR techniques with its immersion and interactivity, this paper combined resources about the enginery knowledge and information to build the overall platform. It significantly improves users’ feeling about and understanding of the part models. It can be visually perceived and is flexible and convenient, providing users with operating experience which makes virtual reality and the real world consistent with each other. Eventually, both people and models can dynamically interact and perceptively communicate with each other.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 301-313
Author(s):  
Andrey A. Negryshev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Web Page ◽  

Author(s):  
Michael Greenhalgh

This chapter evaluates current possibilities for the attainment of a realistic context over the web by attempting to match the basic requirements of art history scholarship and teaching against what is currently offered and what can be expected in the future. It surveys some ongoing research in the field from the perspective of an observer and a user. The first section of the chapter discusses virtual reality modelling language (VRML) and describes a project of the Supercomputer Group at the Australian National University. This project aimed to model, using VRML, the Buddhist stupa at Borobudur. The chapter also discusses a second project which deals with the Piazza de Popolo at Rome and the reasons why this project did not employ VMRL. The second section of the chapter examines some other ways in which an ordinary lecturer may use various simple technologies to conjure context, and with more flexibility, detail and accuracy that VRML can ever achieve.


Author(s):  
Kosmas Dimitropoulos ◽  
Athanasios Manitsaris

This chapter aims to study the benefits that arise from the use of virtual reality technology and World Wide Web in the field of distance education, as well as to further explore the role of instructors and learners in such a network-centric mode of education. Within this framework, special emphasis is given on the design and development of web-based virtual learning environments so as to successfully fulfil their educational objectives. In particular, the chapter includes research on distance education on the Web and the role of virtual reality, as well as study on basic pedagogical methods focusing mainly on the efficient preparation, approach and presentation of the learning content. Moreover, specific designing rules are presented considering the hypermedia, virtual and educational nature of this kind of applications. Finally, an innovative virtual reality environment for distance education in medicine, which reproduces conditions of the real learning process and enhances learning through a real-time interactive simulator, is demonstrated.


Author(s):  
Elliot Bentley

Exploring the types of graphics made possible by the web, including interactive dataviz, games and virtual reality (VR).


Author(s):  
Alan Rea

In this chapter, the author argues that virtual reality (VR) does have a place in e-commerce as a Web 2.0 application. However, VR is not ready to supplant standard e-commerce Web interfaces with a completely immersive VR environment. Rather, VRCommerce must rely on a mixed platform presentation to accommodate diverse levels of usability, technical feasibility, and user trust. The author proposes that e-commerce sites that want to implement VRCommerce offer at least three layers of interaction: a standard Web interface, embedded VR objects in a Web interface, and semi-immersive VR within an existing Web interface. This system is termed the Layered Virtual Reality Commerce System, or LaVRCS. This proposed LaVRCS framework can work in conjunction with Rich Internet Applications, Webtops, and other Web 2.0 applications to offer another avenue of interaction within the e-commerce realm. With adoption and development, LaVRCS will help propel e-commerce into the Web 3.0 realm and beyond.


RENOTE ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Everton Souza ◽  
Edgard Lamounier ◽  
Alexandre Cardoso

This paper presents Ludos Top - an educational 3D game that use virtual reality techniques, which can support multi-student with anew design model of networking on the web. The project has actively involved end-users to focus on increase interactivity through the use of versatile system architecture.We present a quick prototyping of a multi-user virtual world through the employment of Ajax, X3D and Web Services provides an efficient, flexible and robust means for distributed application. Results showimproved network capabilities, in terms of interactive, ease of use, enjoyability, playability and usability.


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