ascii Virtual Reality

There were a couple of inquiries, since quotes from my article appeared on
some news servers, whereas my original did not. Strange, but apparently
true. Anyway, I think this topic deserves its own subject line in any
case.

Responding to a "how to" question, one could conceivably start with the
basic 360 degrees panoramic view, and gradually add the bells and whistles
to arrive at true "ascii Virtual Reality", see below.
************
One could utilize the ability to scroll sideways on a webpage to deliver
360 degrees panoramic views, which would be the ascii equivalent of
Virtual Reality, I think it would be perfectly justified to call creations
of this nature "ascii Virtual Reality". 

Of course, one could also utilize the ability to scroll vertically "to
look up and down". Utilizing both scroll funtions, i.e. sideways and
vertically, would allow you to depict an entire hemisphere, e.g. the stars
in the Northern or Southern hemisphere. 

Of course, one could add Java animation on top of it to depict the passage
of the stars in the course of the night, etc, etc.

Compared to ANSI/VT animation techniques, Java alone adds nothing new in
terms of visual effects, and although I am not aware of an ANSI/VT
animation of the Northern and/or Southern hemisphere, I would not be
surprised if someone has already done it (It is an obvious topic to pick,
isn't it?). 

However, the above "ascii Virtual Reality" in conjunction with the web
does allow you "to turn your head sideways and up and down", something
that ANSI/VT animation techniques do *not* offer.

I myself am not interested in pursuing these ideas further, but others
might.

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I just conducted an interesting experiment: I sent a test message to one
of the test newsgroups with a bar chart which is 360 characters wide,
thinking along the lines that one character may correspond to 1 degree in
a 360 degrees panoramic view.

I sent the 360 characters wide bar chart with Netscape News, and reading
it back with Netscape News, all 360 characters appeared totally unwrapped!
In other words, you need to scroll sideways, but all 360 characters
appeared in a straight, unbroken line! 

Reading the test message with NewsWatcher (an excellent newsreader for the
Mac, but it features no sideway scroll), the *test message* itself
appeared unwrapped, but the *display* of the test message is wrapped as a
function of font size and width of the display window (i.e. if you choose
a large font size and a narrow display window, the bar chart will linewrap
at short intervals, and vice versa, if you choose a small font size and a
wide display window, the bar chart will linewrap at long intervals).

I find this an interesting observation, since it basically says, that if
you can rely on pure NNTP servers and NNTP clients (newsgroup programs)
with sideway scroll feature, then you can transmit panoramic views over
newgroups!

I did not repeat the experiment with longer bar charts, but I am convinced
that there is no practical limit.

I plan to include this observation as part of the analysis of the Linewrap
Survey.

---------------------------------------------------------------
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  (  ^^        ^^
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---------------------------------------------------------------

pet...@aol.com (PeteCasso):
> I just conducted an interesting experiment:  [...] I plan to include
> this observation as part of the analysis of the Linewrap Survey.

So you found out that the linewrap depends on the used
newsreader and the settings of font and its size?
How about diffenrent monitors and terminals?  ;-)

Sven

>So you found out that the linewrap depends on the used
>newsreader and the settings of font and its size?
>How about diffenrent monitors and terminals?  ;-)

That's obvious, isn't it?

But the survey goes further than that, it will determine what will and
will not linewrap at the default settings in commonly used hardware and
software.

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Sven Guckes (guc...@banach.math.fu-berlin.de) writes:

Hiya SvenStein. :)

> So you found out that the linewrap depends on the used
> newsreader and the settings of font and its size?
> How about diffenrent monitors and terminals?  ;-)

I kind of wonder about this "experiment"...  As I mentioned to him in email,
I use xterms 100 or more characters wide.  I just saw a message from Joan
that didn't wrap at 86 columns, while PC's wrapped at 75 chars.
(Would this be a function of his mailer/gateway/somedoodad?)

ObAscii:  (did it a while ago, hasn't been posted here yet)
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[ -Tim Park ]  (___) (___)
--
Tim Park (ad5...@freenet.carleton.ca) # RANCO Shampoo Rep / OSMC Parapara Rep
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