If you have any questions, please ask the angel

Browsing computer files in the near future of 1994 shall involve VR headsets and orchestral electric guitar licks.

1. [Gutierrez]

   I want immersive VR about as bad as I want my flying car.

2. [Luke McCormick]

   Hey, Stacks!

3. [phlavor]

   I have a question for the angel. How is this a viable user interface. If I want a file, I don’t walk down enormous treacherous hallways now so how is this a step in the right direction.

4. [Mister Moofoo]

   I never watched this movie because I thought it was just a revenge fantasy about sexual harassment. No idea it had any of the sci-fi in it at all, Crichton notwithstanding.

5. [infinity]

   so yeah. it’s funny, this sequence; it’s so very 90′s. remember, this was the era of jaron lanier evangelizing the polhemus / helmet style VR experience. this was what people thought of when they thought virtual reality.

   these days we think of VR more in terms of “virtual worlds” that are like grown-up MUDs/MOOs meet VPL minus the helmet. i spend a lot of time wondering what the (virtual) landscape will look like 15 years from now. will we all be scoffing about the silly idea of trying to do a social virtual world without eye tracking? or will hybrid virtual / real experiences be the technology de jour?

   but for what it’s worth.. i think this clip does a dis-service to the concept of virtual reality and virtual worlds. by taking something that works well (a file system navigated by a GUI or *shudder* even a command line) and putting a new presentation experience on top of it.. yes.. it doesn’t really create something of great value.

   however… if this same interface allowed multiple people who were geographically distributed to share the experience of searching or examining the contents of the file system, perhaps in a way so participants could get non-verbal / non-textual feedback from other users… well.. that would be more interesting. you could have a shared social experience amongst geographically distributed participants. that is something you _cannot_ do with a GUI based file system interface.

6. [infinity]

   and the funny bit… my avatar in second life is mostly an angel (though occasionally a daemon.)

7. [Clay]

   I have an idea for a modern-day, epic, VR filesystem UI:

   It’s a vast, Italian Renaissance-styled atrium with a grand pedestal in the center upon which rests a massive globe of intersecting bronze rings surrounding a great marble magnifying glass, all rendered with high-res textures and complex pixel shaders.

   You walk up to the pedestal, and then, as if by magic, the Spotlight menu comes down from the top right of the screen.

8. [infinity]

   @clay … and then you get the spinning pizza-disk for 15 seconds…

9. [overunger]

   It would be funny if the first REAL and awesome full immersion VR had that soundtrack in the background.
   It looks like that new-fangled Augmented Reality with the goggles is heading into this territory. I’m excited for future applications of it.