If we're going to have a comp.vr hierarchy, we should also have
comp.vr.announce, IMHO.
Now back to the subject...
In a possible past, Eric Kimminau said:
> [Snip] I have already
> experienced, to coin a phrase "Virtual Reality Confusion" or "VRC(see)".
>
> I define this as a state of being lost in VR, up is left, down is forward
> and Im stuck in a corner. [...]
>
> Anyone else have this same problem? ANyone else have a convenient way of
> doing this in a standard way?
>
Have your browser implement gravity-like behaviour.
For earth-crawling paradigms, unless you have "magnetic boots" (expert-level
option) you will orient head away from COG or a reference plane (see later).
Make the (novice-level) full-freedom browsing paradigm a glass helicopter,
which orients with respect to COG.
The cockpit contains visual cues for orientation. I'd suggest HUD-like
"ladders" with pitch, roll and yaw axes in different colours. Intersections
would contain arrows pointing to dead-ahead, whilst dead-ahead has no
arrowing and dead-aft has a starburst arrow. The viewer's viewpoint can
move freely within the cockpit, using pitch, roll and yaw. The chopper is
contstrained in normal movement to translation only, unless the user
deliberately reorients it. More advanced users can release that constraint,
at the risk of (personal) disorientation, but with the option of
renormalising with respect to COG.
Where there is no obvious COG, the viewer can define a reference plane
by orientation and position, and designate "up" and "down" surfaces,
or simply float (intermediate-level) using the cockpit cues as
orientation (which is arguably the same thing).
-- [email protected] Hyphen home page: http://www.hyphen.com/ [email protected] And mine: http://www.hyphen.com/html/jonsg/ PGP key available on request Opinions here are mine, not Hyphen's