Did we ever determine whether or not the images, as translated into 3D virtual reality, would be very good?

Did we ever find any examples of what it might look like?

I am rereading the book (4th time) and find myself wondering if some of his descriptions, in that they invoke a hyperreal luminosity, might be impossible as yet.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Did we ever determine whether or not the images, as translated into 3D virtual reality, would be very good?

Did we ever find any examples of what it might look like?

I am rereading the book (4th time) and find myself wondering if some of his descriptions, in that they invoke a hyperreal luminosity, might be impossible as yet.

Too hard to say I think.

I mean, so many variables. River could be a texture blob, or a rotoscoped publicity photo, or "scanned" pictures from the actual scene.

I'd assume they can look at least as good as "the best" of current computer games.

But these all lead to places I don't think Gibson books are well suited to. "real" technical detail.

Are they using Maya? 3d Studio Max? Custom plug-in? Automated media generation?

What's the display device capable of? 300 lines? 720 lines?

How is it transmitted anyway? Is it a kinda of hyperlink? What's the protocol involved for data transfer?

etc, etc, etc.

What's the caliber of Molly's fletcher? How many speeds did Chevette's bike have? How big are the engines in those hovercraft?


So, my answer would be: They look just as fuckin' sweet as you imagine they do.

Anything can be rendered computar wise, given enough time, enough effort, enough processor time, so...that's what they did.

Right?

Or if you have specific quotes I can over analyze them too.

This is different from the obsessive otaku exploration of the millimeters between the millimeters. This has to do with a technology that could exist, in broad terms, and whether or not it does is at least a bit significant to Gibson's dissection of the world.

At least to me insofar as if it does not then he's into a bit of the old "alternate timeline" as in The Bridge Trilogy.

Here: Is Bill seeing the nodal points, or is he causing them?

I guess what I am getting at is: Is this a Gibson prescience like in PR where YouTube comes along a couple of years later, or is this something we could be doing as a culture but aren't for some reason?

So, reading the book again I realize that Mama Bigend is likely dead based on the text from page 82 of the hardback.

Bigend refers to her in the past tense.

Alas.

oh! I see. Well then....

Yes, definitely. Very possible. They've got all the "augmented reality" gear out there currently, and most of those projects seem to have shown up in Wired several years ago, implying that SOTA would have improved by now.

I think the display is the crucial bit, the rest of it is pretty obviously there now (computar gwaphics, wireless data transfer, dead celebs).

I certainly do think that sci-fi authors "cause" nodal points, I think some of them even talk about this. Engineers are often...you know, engineer "types", statist, realist, pragmatist, anal retentive, not all of them, naturally, but being trained in a realist, pragmatist, type discipline should lead to a confluence of both entraining folks to be that way, and attracting folks that are already that way.

Thus sci-fi types are needed for provide the raw imagination to power the engineering. If only to spark the imagination. I think there was a Teh Gibz NPR interview from the VL era (first time I heard him speak, in the pre-broadband days of yore, one-time media access)where he said that initially his term for cyberspace was something like "data world" or an equally clunky term. Similarly "augmented reality" versus "virtualized locative art".

I think it goes both ways. I read an analysis once of how the Romans had all of the requisite technology to make fully automatic firearms, but, obviously, never put it together quite like that. Sometimes you've a bunch of existing tech, just sittin' there, "off the shelf", which can be rearranged to do neat stuff (locative virtual art) and sometimes you've got whacky sci-fi writers talkin' about "space elevators" and then folks try to build such things.

I think that since tech is so dull and prosaic by itself you need somebody, Gibson, somebody, to define\suggest nodal points. Electric guitars for instance. Pretty basic dull tech. But interesting results, far "more" than "just" electric noise makers.

Or...I dunno, Raves and Techno, from space music, and synths. The idea of the synth, the engineering of the synth, and then the uses it's put to.

Same here?

Ultimately I'm quite certain the augmented reality world is coming quickly. Non-boutique VR gogs are the main missing component. Your iPhone can do (essentially) all the rest of that shit.

But then I thought that was going to be the case prior to SC.

I do think a crucial differences between something like locative virtual art and Youtube\FFF is that one (youtube) is already "there", we had vidz on teh int3rn3tz prior to that, we even had repositories of them, just not quite the same scale, and then the "long tail" shit takes over. But the goggles. Those have to be created, economy-of-scale'd, so they can get widespread enough for it to work.

Like wireless networking. Formerly a gimmick, now ubiquitous, but only because they be so cheap, only because they all hook to a real network, cabled, at some point, only because they're mostly left open, only because way way more folks have laptops\PDAs\iPhones than before, and all the rest of it.

It's a hardware issue. And I don't think that locative virtual art is the "killer app" that will cause such hardware to be created and become widespread enough that it'll be a commodity so that "everybody" can afford it.

So, finally:

I don't think it is something we can be doing now, not outside of the boutique\proof-of-concept thing, but it's certainly possible that it could show up in a couple years.

I quite like your assessment.

But what will be the catalyst for that killer app? What will push it on the road to ubiquity?

If the parts are all there then why not the reality? It is different from the Ramon Machine Gun, it's an idea that is already present, in fact, it was once ubiquitous as a meme. Taken for granted, expected, so very ready to land in the hot little hands of tomorrow.

We were all reading Ecstasy Club and flipping through Mondo 2000 and assuming we'd so be there by now.

But it didn't come together. Maybe the tech wasn't all there. If it is now, then have we simply become bored with the idea? Has the meme slipped past its prime?

Surely there are no end to digital artists, film makers, video game executives and the like who ought to be pushing for this.

Why isn't my Xbox 360 in VR?

Why doesn't my Playstation 3 immerse me inside Solid Snake's Lower Intestines?

What's up with my tomorrows?

No money? I'd think that would be the killer app...a way to make money off it somehow.

Since most of the augmented reality stuff can be done...without any augmenting, what's the angle?

If I had the goggs I could look at a movie theatre and it would pop up showtimes, films, ratings, run times, blah blah blah, but....if I've got a smartphone dealie...I can do that pretty much anyway.

So first there's gotta be money. Which is of course a catch-22 since you can't have money prior to have a market.

Which I guess is what happened to your tomorrows.

I think there are also usage issues. We *could* have VR x-bawx but the goggles'd be plugged in to the system and probably clunky for wearing around town.

Another catch-22. The goggles won't be worth owning until they are stylish enough that you won't feel like a nerd-dork-tard wearing them around town.

Summin' up:

No money
No advantage
and thus
No demand
and
Insufficient Tech


I think if somebody could come up with a way to make VR immersion style stuff actually, you know, useful, that would help.

Something you could only do, or only do well, with a immersive interface like that. But really monitors, dual monitors, etc, they work pretty good for the data stuff we do.


Finally, to make it really good, the goggles have to be like sun-glasses, light enough, but they also have to be transparent so you can layer stuff over them. Putting lil screen in front of your eyes and using a head-tracker, that's real easy, but making them transparent so you don't have to take them off to interact with the real work AND making them small....trickier, and w.o. money to be made on the back end....stifles the innovation.

This is more particularly true in the commodity\loss-leader hardware market.

Just like cell handsets, you'll have to be able to give away the goggles, and then make them pay for the experience, services, etc.

So you can't just design a sweet product and hope folks will pay 2000\1000\750\500\300\250\200 for it, particularly since...what do you do with it when you got it? And if there's no installed base then...who's going to develop for it? And what will they really develop?

See, now you're way off. If we could sit in our houses and play full immersion VR Zelda, we'd be doing it. What the hell is the Wii but a proxy to VR?

No, there is loads of money in it. Fully immersive environments would be hot shit in the world of video games, there has to be another issue.

And if we could do that then they'd have this shit at Gameworks and Dave & Busters already, until they could scale it down.

Not to mention that #D is making a comeback in theaters, if they could do a holo-film, they would.

No man...

The early 90's called, they want their Mondo 2000s back. And if you weren't paying attention, there were full-VR installations in arcades back then, but they were too expensive and, at some level, too clunky.

Binocular LCD goggles do exist. There have been Red/Blue 3D applications for games since the late 90s, if you had the right video hardware. I think the main obstacle for immersive 3D gaming isn't tech. Right now, it's human. We have done so well with our 2D metaphors for manipulating objects on-screen that moving past that into binocular simulation and immersive 3D might just be an unnecessary step.

The Wii is an interesting step, in that it's pointing device is somewhat nontraditional, and games that take advantage of its tactile features genuinely feel different.

But the problem is: our current interfaces (mice, keyboards, joysticks) are pretty efficient.

Besides, who didn't duck when an imp threw a fireball at you in the heat of playing Doom or Doom II?

In thinking about this a bit more I wonder....maybe Gibson has it right.

"Underground" locative "art".

If you ain't got the device, you can't see it, so you gotta get the device to see what's "really" happening.

Underground viral shit, folx be payin' tall dollars for a fix of that magical drug called exclusivity.

More in a sec....

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
See, now you're way off. If we could sit in our houses and play full immersion VR Zelda, we'd be doing it. What the hell is the Wii but a proxy to VR?

No, there is loads of money in it. Fully immersive environments would be hot shit in the world of video games, there has to be another issue.

And if we could do that then they'd have this shit at Gameworks and Dave & Busters already, until they could scale it down.

Not to mention that #D is making a comeback in theaters, if they could do a holo-film, they would.

No man...

But Justy....we ain't talkin' about *that* oldskool shiat. We talkin' 'bout nuskool VR.


Anyway...now to agree with Justy, yah, it all works so well now. Why don't we drive cars with joysticks?

'Cause the steering wheel and pedals work just fine.

Now, back to UberD.

Sure, if we could play VR-Z, that'd be sweet, but....how you gonna do that with no hardware?

And if there is no hardware then....what is it going to developed on? And who are they going to sell it to?

So that's why I figure it's gotta be subsidized hardware otherwise it'll end up like the Nintendo Power Glove or that Robot thingie they sold for the Nintendo, a neat idea.

But if you are giving it away then it's likely to be a custom jack right? I mean if Micro$oft sells you a X-borx 720 with a "free" VR Visor will they really want you to be pluggin' it in to your Playstation 4?

You could have an industry consortium standard deal, but that still requires a application for it that will be so much better than mouse\keyboard\monitor that folks will switch, and since it's not really an interface but a display...what kinda new functionality will you expose with it that will make people want to switch. Particularly if they've already got a 46" TV.

So for video games. Where you just sit on your ass on the couch. You've gotta have an installed base first or you can't make money on it. I'd think they'd want to engineer hardware for it, so that implies they'll have to wait, again, until the next-next-gen consoles are out.

But that's not really the same as an augmented reality system that interfaces with your iPhone and lets you wander the streets looking at random art "installations" or all those other fun Spook Country tricks.

That's a tad more complex I think, particularly in terms of, again, applications. Since I don't think immersive gaming where you can wander in to traffic will be a killer app for people that own smartphones, if indeed you could slap enough graphics stuff in to a phone to make it worth your while.

The book was a....like a laptop plus visor plus battery thing? Not "clunky" but not "microchannel amps" built in to your mirror implants either.

So another issue. First you gotta have hardware for folks to code on\for, then you gotta have people that would actually carry that much stuff around just to look at things, then you gotta make it cheap enough and prevalent enough that everybody can afford one (again, if there's no market then there's no content, so then the hardware isn't any use anyway) and so forth and so on.

I'm sure we'll get there, "5-10 years" as they always say.

So for games, as a "free" thing that comes with your new console...that's likely to be how it starts. And then once the proprietary hardware is out folks will code for it, find uses for it, and make more open versions and so forth and so on.


I can certainly see gaming, but for the "wander around lookin' at 'nothing'", style....again, what's the app?

And then for gaming, if the visor hardware costs more\as much\near the cost of the console hardware....how can they give it away?

Chicken\Egg. As soon as we feel like need omelets...it's on!

OK, first of all, the problem with 90's tech was that it looked like shit.

But if you could play GTA 4 in 3D that would look cool.

And they already sell you the gaming hardware, so why not sell you the 3D gaming hardware next time if they can get the price point right and work out the bugs?

As for wandering around and the locative, well, that comes after a field test with somehting like a gaming rig.

I am immensely surprised that neither of you seem to see the implicit potential (artistically and financially) in realistic, three dimensional immersion.

It didn't fail in the 90's because it was a bad idea, it failed because the tech wasn't up to date with the ideas.

Not to mention both of you seem to be operating under the premise that technology comes about when it's cost-effective, which isn't the case.

Technology comes about when someone can figure out how to put it together.

I'd think reading Gibson would at least have taught you that technology is under no human restraints (financial or moral) but rather that humanity is under technologies restraints. You are both acting like it's the other way around.
Technology motivates economics which motivates culture.

Technology has always been on top of that hierarchy. The fact that it's isn't a precise and faithful hierarchy should be ignored for purposes of this demonstration.

*bangs head against wall*

Y'all read too much Wired. They ave nifty covers but they only really tell you what happened yesterday and maybe what could happen next Tuesday.

They're kind of the Cory Doctorow of tech mags.

quote:

Not to mention both of you seem to be operating under the premise that technology comes about when it's cost-effective, which isn't the case.

Technology comes about when someone can figure out how to put it together

I never actually said anything of the sort with regard to markets, and I agree with you on your second premise. Right now, however, human designers seem still to be coming up with new ways to do things in 2D over 3D-rendered environments. So we're getting there.

Will immersive VR eventually become viable? Sure. In many ways, it already has in various forms (I still maintain that some of my MUD experiences were every bit as immersive as true 3D may turn out to be). When it hits big, however, none of us will have seen in what form or *how* coming.

I haven't read Wired in years, and I only hit boingboing when I've seen links here.

Your impatience is kind of funny, UberDog. There are certain things I'm content to enjoy the ride with, and seeing where this particular subset of technology goes is one of them. Aesthetic theories, after all, follow developments, not the other way around.

I don't mean to discount the possibilities, but I thought your question had been, "Can we do this and if so why are we not?".


Sure could be awesome, I've thought about it quite a bit, the integrated reality. Assuming some maximum highend shit is fun, all kinds of strange things.

And what could they do to a story?

I thought I read on this board someone saying that "classic" CP style was to skip the "info dump" and assume a narrative where such things just don't need to be explained much.

Like you'd use your rig to project that skinlevel texture, so that you could change your eye color, "size", etc. Like changing your avatar in SL or WoW, but you wear it. So then naturally you have multiple identities, multiple avatars, for work, play, night, day. In the text it would not be worth mentioning what was happening, but instead just describe it. People change shape and appearance radically.

I always wonder about the human purposes. After making it easy to shop, work, keep abreast of events, make yourself pretty, project your PoV, watch the latest movie, which is just a cam feed from somebody elses PoV, and what you're seeing can always be suspect, unless you take the gear off, and then you can't do anything.

Sure, great, right? But, what then?

Does that enable a more interesting story? Or just parts of the possibilities?

Like you could write a series of short stories, but, turns out, all the same entity, it's just looking thru different eyes, narrating different PoV, just a little meme in people pool. Moved by strange attractors, uncertain why you're doing what you're doing, everything assumes a weird significance. It reads like a "drug" book, but "in the world", it's just another day in the integrated life.

I mean it seems shortsighted to assume The Machine is going to take over with metal robots and such when they can just use all this extra human tissue themselves. I don't think of the lil microtransistors in my computer as sentient and our Machine Overlords certainly won't have any reason to tell us what they're using us for any more than we'd explain to a particular bandsaw your master plan for rearranging you kitchen cabinets.

I like to think that the virtual coatings and dataworld interface will result in less construction, lots of that tasty urban blight, just no energy to make it worth the time to tear it all down, just build new stuff.

Combine that with massive floating cities and flooded coastlands in the wake of catastrophic climate change.

Sounds pretty good, get Richard K. Morgan to sex it up a bit and it'd be a fine Waterworld style film fiasco!

I read Little Brother just yesterday. Was it for kids or something? I found it lame. Trying to imagine how I'd've liked it if I'd've been that old then was better than the book.

Tho the ParanoidLin00>< thing is pretty funny.

quote:

When it hits big, however, none of us will have seen in what form or *how* coming.

It strikes me, quite a few minutes after I've written this post, that *that* is the truth I glean again and again from Gibson's work. Even if you're working on the important stuff, its effects are unpredictable. Humans have enough agency to learn from what came before and make new things, but how other humans receive those innovations (even linguistic) is entirely unpredictable. How the larger "natural" world is effected by/reacts to those innovations is largely unpredictable without a large enough structure of theories (and that will be asymptotic). Of course, even humanity's "artificial" technologies are part of nature. The conversation Colin has with Rei's owner is perhaps my favorite part of Idoru.

For me, it's never been about restraints. It's about negotiation and experimentation. Right now, there are limitations and restraints upon technologies, largely due to humans not being sure where to go with some of them yet. Chances are, we just haven't yet seen the realizations of these possibilities yet (they're certainly already being thought/already exist), but they are also there. The revelation of these possibilities, their coming into the real, depends on an ultimately complex system that depends on money as much as innovation. So those restraints will eventually dissolve. Many of them already have.

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:
Your impatience is kind of funny, UberDog. There are certain things I'm content to enjoy the ride with, and seeing where this particular subset of technology goes is one of them. Aesthetic theories, after all, follow developments, not the other way around.

My impatience is legendary.

Aesthetic theories should precede developments, that's what's wrong with America.

Well, apathy isn't helping either, but still...

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:
I don't mean to discount the possibilities, but I thought your question had been, "Can we do this and if so why are we not?".

It was, but the conversation floated. Damn conversations.

quote:

And what could they do to a story?

I thought I read on this board someone saying that "classic" CP style was to skip the "info dump" and assume a narrative where such things just don't need to be explained much.

Like you'd use your rig to project that skinlevel texture, so that you could change your eye color, "size", etc. Like changing your avatar in SL or WoW, but you wear it. So then naturally you have multiple identities, multiple avatars, for work, play, night, day. In the text it would not be worth mentioning what was happening, but instead just describe it. People change shape and appearance radically.

I always wonder about the human purposes. After making it easy to shop, work, keep abreast of events, make yourself pretty, project your PoV, watch the latest movie, which is just a cam feed from somebody elses PoV, and what you're seeing can always be suspect, unless you take the gear off, and then you can't do anything.

Sure, great, right? But, what then?

Does that enable a more interesting story? Or just parts of the possibilities?

It does. Gaming is interactive-ish, you start "feeling" the story, or rather, the experiential content. As Justy pointed out, who didn't duck out of the way of demon balls?

The more immersed, the more story has a compelling way to entrance. it isn't about telling a linear story at that point but exploring a "garden of forking paths."

I think that if we ever had a "game" or "narrative" engine which did that we'd open ourselves us to something truly unique.

Not merely something that was "cool" but something that was by definition a conceptual leap. What if there really was a Holodeck?

I mean, we're talking people living in customozed worlds, more so than they do anyway.

That to me is what Gibson was really getting at with the locative, the ability to personalize the actual daily existence of the world as one sees fit. At that point, who and how do you speak with?

How far does disintegration go?

How many pieces can something break into and still be a "somehting?"

You see what I'm getting at here, we are going from (maybe) the hideously monolithic (Milgrim's single bandwidth Medieval Europe dream) to the white noise of the profusion of personality where everything is so unique as to be wholly without context and meaning.

From the very big and imposing, to the very small and all but unintelligible.
Kind of like the difference between the heat death of the universe, the Big Crunch and what they now think will be the slow, lonely cold death of impossible vast spaces.

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:
I don't mean to discount the possibilities, but I thought your question had been, "Can we do this and if so why are we not?".


Sure could be awesome, I've thought about it quite a bit, the integrated reality. Assuming some maximum highend shit is fun, all kinds of strange things.

And what could they do to a story?

I thought I read on this board someone saying that "classic" CP style was to skip the "info dump" and assume a narrative where such things just don't need to be explained much.

Like you'd use your rig to project that skinlevel texture, so that you could change your eye color, "size", etc. Like changing your avatar in SL or WoW, but you wear it. So then naturally you have multiple identities, multiple avatars, for work, play, night, day. In the text it would not be worth mentioning what was happening, but instead just describe it. People change shape and appearance radically.

I always wonder about the human purposes. After making it easy to shop, work, keep abreast of events, make yourself pretty, project your PoV, watch the latest movie, which is just a cam feed from somebody elses PoV, and what you're seeing can always be suspect, unless you take the gear off, and then you can't do anything.

Sure, great, right? But, what then?

Does that enable a more interesting story? Or just parts of the possibilities?

Like you could write a series of short stories, but, turns out, all the same entity, it's just looking thru different eyes, narrating different PoV, just a little meme in people pool. Moved by strange attractors, uncertain why you're doing what you're doing, everything assumes a weird significance. It reads like a "drug" book, but "in the world", it's just another day in the integrated life.

I mean it seems shortsighted to assume The Machine is going to take over with metal robots and such when they can just use all this extra human tissue themselves. I don't think of the lil microtransistors in my computer as sentient and our Machine Overlords certainly won't have any reason to tell us what they're using us for any more than we'd explain to a particular bandsaw your master plan for rearranging you kitchen cabinets.

I like to think that the virtual coatings and dataworld interface will result in less construction, lots of that tasty urban blight, just no energy to make it worth the time to tear it all down, just build new stuff.

Combine that with massive floating cities and flooded coastlands in the wake of catastrophic climate change.

Sounds pretty good, get Richard K. Morgan to sex it up a bit and it'd be a fine Waterworld style film fiasco!

I read Little Brother just yesterday. Was it for kids or something? I found it lame. Trying to imagine how I'd've liked it if I'd've been that old then was better than the book.

Tho the ParanoidLin00>< thing is pretty funny.

Richard K. Morgan sucks donkey dung through a flexi-straw.

quote:

Originally posted by Justy:

quote:

When it hits big, however, none of us will have seen in what form or *how* coming.

It strikes me, quite a few minutes after I've written this post, that *that* is the truth I glean again and again from Gibson's work. Even if you're working on the important stuff, its effects are unpredictable. Humans have enough agency to learn from what came before and make new things, but how other humans receive those innovations (even linguistic) is entirely unpredictable. How the larger "natural" world is effected by/reacts to those innovations is largely unpredictable without a large enough structure of theories (and that will be asymptotic). Of course, even humanity's "artificial" technologies are part of nature. The conversation Colin has with Rei's owner is perhaps my favorite part of Idoru.

For me, it's never been about restraints. It's about negotiation and experimentation. Right now, there are limitations and restraints upon technologies, largely due to humans not being sure where to go with some of them yet. Chances are, we just haven't yet seen the realizations of these possibilities yet (they're certainly already being thought/already exist), but they are also there. The revelation of these possibilities, their coming into the real, depends on an ultimately complex system that depends on money as much as innovation. So those restraints will eventually dissolve. Many of them already have.

If that is Gibson's major message (and I don't think he has one) Id be disappointed.

That said, I still disagree vehemently with your notion that we are in charge of our technology, that we actually implement decisions about where it will go and what we'll do with it.

I think we have very, very little control over what we make and where it goes from there. you point this out in the first paragraph but you suggest that there is more intentionality in the second. I read it that way anyway.

I do not believe that we have much control over where our technology takes us. Just taken a simple point: we make a thing which then gets used for something else and by the time we think that somehting else might be best not being, we are unable to stop said somehting else.

I really do not think we have any control over the shit we make. man the toolmaker is, ultimately, the reproductive system of said tools.

I'm not you, so while that's my major takeway re: tech, I've found much more interesting takeaways re: human relationships and memory in Gibson's work.

quote:

I do not believe that we have much control over where our technology takes us. Just taken a simple point: we make a thing which then gets used for something else and by the time we think that somehting else might be best not being, we are unable to stop said somehting else.

Why? Humans *use* said thing for something else. Not being able to control other humans and how they use things (or even how they change about how they think) is different from not being able to control how technology develops, as if we're being ridden by technological viruses (I think you're misreading Dennett?). Consider if you might be replacing complexity with a different God.