But why is virtual reality associated with small screens and head tracking? Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"? A lot of software calculates probabilities over some distribution, why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"? Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"? Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"? Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?
I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it. And I do think in many cases it's meant to be dazzling and marketable rather than mean anything.
Because this improves the quality of VR.
> Why wasn't Everquest on a CRT "virtual reality"?
It is an extremely limited form of VR.
> why isn't all that "artificial intelligence"?
It is an extremely limited form of AI.
> Why isn't my Subaru's cruise control and lane keeping technology "autopilot" or "self driving"?
It is an extremely limited form of "self driving". (To be more precise, it's Level 1 self autonomy.)
> Why isn't the elevator controller an "agent"
It is an extremely limited form of an agent.
> Why aren't my own servers "clouds"?
They are extremely limited forms of a cloud. (Though I would argue that a cloud needs to be provided by a third party.)
> I don't need the terminology explained, I'm just tired of it.
It sounds like you are refusing to understand how experiences fall somewhere on a spectrum. Is me and my friend tossing a ball around in my backyard "baseball"? What if we get 7 more friends and stand on a diamond and run around the bases? If I come back afterwards and say "we played baseball", even though it wasn't an MLB-regulated official game adjudicated by umpires, are you going to get really upset at me and say that I'm lying and I didn't really play "baseball"? The same principle applies to everything else you've listed here.
So, I don’t think they are misunderstanding you. It is almost like calling your bluff.
It is an interesting convention.
I don’t dislike these kinds of questions normally. But they do typically lead to a little bit of back and forth. On this site, most interactions are typically only 2-3 posts long. So I think it is better to just state your opinions directly.
Because it's supposed to simulate reality -- and it does a great job of it. Everquest on a CRT doesn't simulate reality; it's nothing like reality. As the capability of something increases it becomes something else. Cruise control on a car that is sufficiently able to drive a car eventually becomes autopilot. Your own server isn't a cloud but put a large enough of them acting together in a way where each individual machine is entirely redundant and replaceable is a cloud. These words describe actual things. You are a person but why isn't any random clump of cells a person?
*-reality interfaces are "immersive", they don't alter or recreate reality.
What artificial intelligence is is (statistical) "inference".
The cloud are various *-providers, "hosting providers", "storage services", etc. In aggregate, "external" or "3rd party" or "outsourced" (computing) infrastructure.
I said it elsewhere -- what frustrates me is that the rest is marketing, but some engineers are willing to accept and even reproduce it for some reason. When Facebook says they're releasing a new reality development platform for the metaverse though, we should roll our eyes, even if the technology is exciting.
Digital computer technologies aren't continuously differentiable so made up terms for grouping each distinct tech stacks is unavoidable. AI is linear algebra but grouping up all AI/ML/RL/perceptron into "electronic linear algebra technology" is not helpful.
...because that's what it is? surely you understand that the difference between 3D, near-eye displays and traditional 2D screens warrants a different label
Just use words to describe technology? Every time I want to say "cloud computing" do I have to say "a service where you use the internet to access software, storage, and processing power that's run on a bunch of server located far away in data center that are owned and managed by a company that specializes in providing these services" instead?
Time-sharing and remote job entry were also reasonable back in the day. You bought time on a computer to run workloads. I don't think they fit so well with the "cloud computing" model in a modern sense technically, but I do envy them for being descriptive, logical terms that describe what is going on. We got the cloud from Google CEO Eric Schmidt who said to a conference in 2006
> What’s interesting is that there is an emergent new model. I don’t think people have really understood how big this opportunity really is. It starts with the premise that the data services and architecture should be on servers. We call it cloud computing — they should be in a “cloud” somewhere. . . . And so what's interesting is that the two – "cloud computing and advertising – go hand-in-hand. There is a new business model that's funding all of the software innovation to allow people to have platform choice, client choice, data architectures that are interesting, solutions that are new – and that's being driven by advertising.
- https://www.google.com/press/podium/ses2006.html
It's strange to me that as engineers we accept and even promote marketing language such as this.
They are two quite different experiences and use cases. Once both are common it would make sense to call both augmented reality but I haven’t heard any better terms for describing the difference to people yet.
My question is why avoid the terms overlay, superposition, display and even vision? Why instead purport to have altered reality?
Traditionally in aviation and the military they said "heads up display", because they can't afford to be obtuse. The display allows the pilot literally to keep their head up, instead of pointed down at their instruments. And I'm sure there was no truck for anyone who would have called it mixed or augmented reality.
x = real world y = virtual world
Best I can tell, mixed reality is augmented reality, but with mixed interaction. You hit the fake ball with a real bat in mixed reality and it bounces off the real wall. Maybe you even feel it hit.
My point is this -- by allusion to some concept with which an inventor wishes to form an association in the consumer's mind, their products are to be thought of as something different than they are, something too grand for plain language. This doesn't serve anyone but the inventor.
The "Internet with head-mounted display" is actually pretty cool technology, I'm not against it. My concern is that it shouldn't be sold or even referred to as an alternate form of reality. For the benefit of product sales, or else the egos of certain technologists, language becomes muddied and the very idea about what makes someone "a person" is bastardized. I think this is wrong and very short sighted.
It's like describing snow to someone who has never seen it. No matter what they allusions they have about snow before they see it, once they've seen it, they know that is snow. And everyone they talk to will have the same meaning.
Same with Augmented reality, mixed reality, whatever. Once it becomes mainstream one of these terms will stick and that's just what it will be. Or it'll be so ingrained in the experience that we no longer even use a separate term to describe it.
It's not like I'm against fun, and if there is more emphasis in the "metaverse" on meaningful social connection, that's good. Games and activities that get you moving around are also a very positive development. Wii was one of my favorite consoles (but was hardly immersive).
My brother is a former pilot and sprung for a full setup so he could play aviation sims. I haven't done a movie yet.
As I said I have nothing against headsets or immersive digital experiences. I do think in this day and age it's worth being more protective of the word "reality", compared to the 90s. Not just in a political sense. The core business of Facebook is advertising and data brokering. I know I might sound like a quack but they really do want to control perception of reality and for us to stare at their screen for as long as possible. Partly because there are ads there, and partly because as we do they stare back at us and take measurements. So that's why I don't accept their "Reality Lab", "The Metaverse", etc. marketing language, and to the extent they control VR it is not VR. They don't want to build the metaverse a la Snow Crash, it will be more like the social -> news feed -> analytica history, plus raking app developers.
Talk to Siri and then talk to ChatGPT if you are feeling that clueless.
The technology is the technology, the application of it is the magic.