At 12:06 PM 08/02/1999 +0100, Neill Newman wrote: >Steve Mann wrote: >from what I have read about mediated reality I had assumed that it was >not fixed to one type of human sensory perception. I had assumed that >when Steve was talking about Mediated reality that it included mediated >audio and possibly other sensory perceptions like touch and smell as >well.. In principle it ought to, if I understand the idea correctly. In present fact, full sensory modification isn't available yet. While we've got audiovisual generation down solidly for the most part, touch is more difficult; with current technology you actually have to cover the area you want to modify the sensations of with a tactile generator of some kind, and only a limited range of sensation can be generated, usually less than the unenhanced equivalent. And for taste and smell, short of carrying around a selection of perfumes and flavor extracts and spraying them from time to time into the nose and mouth, there is no way AFIAK to artificially stimulate those senses. This kind of immersive technology is real bleeding edge stuff, and today is mostly studied by the simulated-reality groups. Mediated reality, since it is supposed to provide an enhanced yet accurate picture of the world around you, has serious issues involving synchronization: the stimulus has to match the environment on at least some level. Again, while techniques for sound and video are well-developed for this (AFAIK), it would simply be beyond our current abilities to provide real-time full-sensory stimulation. Like so many things in the VR field, immersive MR will probably have to wait until the development of pseudosensory induction, if that's possible. It may prove difficult even then, becuase of the synchronization issues; you'd still need the camera, sound equipment, pressure mesh, and some kind of chemoreceptors in order for the computer to 'sense' for you, a factor that doesn't come up in other areas of immersive VR. For now, at least, the 'limitation' of sight and hearing only is acceptable, I imagine. Finally, with an immersive MR, you begin to blur the lines a bit, as you can no longer judge from use of your unenhanced senses the accuracy of the sensation, which could, if nothing else, lead to a feeling of dissociation with the physical body. For some reason, the story, "Where am I?" (in _Mind's I_; I may have the title wrong, but it was a followup by a second author on a story by Dennett, in which the subject is given direct control over a group of robots through induced reality, only to learn later that one of the 'robots' was his own body) comes to mind, half-seriously. J Osako Programmer Analyst, Operating Systems Designer, Notational Engineer http://www.slip.net/~scholr/resume.html -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org
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