Comment by underlipton

>Or you were referring to Rainbow's End in which case I'm embarrassed about my comment.

Sorry, Gumby, it's the Play-Doh press for you.

I feel you. RE is probably going to end up being wrong about a lot of things, too; in particular, Vinge even kind of hinted at how the lack of haptics would cause the "mirror world" and virtual object schemas to break down, at least as far as immersion and utility go. Ultimately, I don't think we get to the world he described without the tech that was just nascent within it. That's analogous to the inapplicability of real-world translation metaphors to the pop-into-existence data stream that is the web, as you said. I realized this the moment that I reached out to touch the 3D model of a character I'd created and nothing was there.

Gaming short-circuits perception and gives leeway in a lot of ways that are conducive to a haptic-less experience, though. Good movement and animation can make up for a lack of embodiment that would kill a more serious experience (Second Life as a virtual office or retail branch...), and while animation is much less reliable of a tool for VR, I'm sure that other affordances can be found if devs are allowed to just... play around with it (pun intended).

The presentation kind of disappointed me because I didn't see an understanding of the situation that they face.