testing...
Is the list still alive? Just a test. :-) -=-=-=-=-=-=-- Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape? A. They are both purple... except for the elephant. -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://members.optushome.com.au/miriame Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au
Re: Graphics Lunch at Stanford
[moan] I wish I could be there but I am on the other side of the planet. :( If anybody makes it along to the talk would they consider posting a condensation of Andrew Glassner's talk. I would love to know what he has to say. I am just now quitting my paid job to embark on my own VR fiction project. [gulp] Best wishes, - Miriam At 06:53 PM 06/03/2001 -0800, Par Winzell wrote: Don't know if any of you guys are local and/or interested in this -- this Thursday -- http://graphics.stanford.edu/glunches/glassner.html Fiction, Graphics, and Interaction: Storytelling for a Wired World Andrew Glassner Abstract People love stories. Good stories can grab us by the gut and take us on an adrenaline-powered rush, they can grab us by the heart and make us feel deep emotions, they can stimulate our minds and make us think, or do all of these things and more. Given the importance of stories, the art and craft of storytelling has been raised to a very high level. Skilled practitioners constantly search for new and effective media in which to create works of fiction. The hardware and software of today's computational and communications environments hold richly attractive possibilities for storytellers. The promise of massive, interactive computer environments has caught the imagination of some developers, and a passionately dedicated (though relatively small) audience. But these environments have so far lacked the elements that have made traditional stories successful - that is, they are places filled with people and objects and short missions, but no overall narrative. The commercial appetite for fiction is enormous: it is the sum of television, films, novels, and more. But we have yet to see a commercially breakthrough title in interactive fiction. In this speculative talk, I will argue that there are a few basic principles that are satisfied by almost all successful storytelling media, and suggest some visual and structural ways to apply those principles of storytelling to create a new style of massively participatory fiction. I'll try to go; not sure yet. Zell Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape? A. They are both purple... except for the elephant. -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://members.optushome.com.au/miriame Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au Part of the development team for http://escape3d.com
RE: virtual storytelling conference
An excellent point Len! I had gotten myself all excited by this conference, but maybe I would do better to just continue with developing my VR fiction piece. It certainly would save me bucks... and those would be more $$ I could afford to spend on surviving while creating my... u... opus. :-) On the subject of platform capabilities, you are totally right there. I was musing on the same thing over the weekend, remembering 30 years ago when I left school trying to save up enough money to buy a 4 function calculator. Now I can buy my Dad a PalmV handheld computer and hardly blink!!! Speaking of the Palm there is actually a Doom-like 3d game for it, and Cortona is available for WinCE devices (the Palms don't use WinCE). What an amazing world is developing. I can hardly wait to see what each new day brings. Best wishes, - Miriam At 06:14 PM 28/01/2001 -0600, Bullard, Claude L \(Len\) wrote: That is cool. After looking at the worlds on a hotter platform this weekend, seeing real time motion, fast good sound, and so on, I am of the opinion that we no longer have the platform barriers we had three years ago to building very compelling vrml-lit. It is just time, imagination, and team work now. I wonder if perhaps in all these conferences, neat though they are, and all the credentialed speakers, if these folks are not the reincarnations of the academics who looked for The American Music in the early part of the twentieth century while down in Chicago, Louis Armstrong was making it. They did not hear it because *he* was not what they were looking for. See Ken Burns series on Jazz on PBS or however you get it in Oz. There are some insights in that history on one period when a new language of expression emerged, and just how little the well-heeled, well-educated, well-mannered, well-credentialed had to say about it because in reality, they had nothing to say. Those who did spoke well. The kids building Doom worlds may be leJazzHot as Clay Shirky points out! Len http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -Original Message- From: Miriam English [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Sunday, January 28, 2001 5:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: virtual storytelling conference Hiya folks, Anybody heard about the first Virtual Storytelling Conference, being organised in Avignon, France for September this year? It sounds wonderful. Read about it on: http://www.virtualstorytelling.com/ICVS2001/ Best wishes, - Miriam Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape? A. They are both purple... except for the elephant. -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com Part of the development team for http://escape3d.com Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape? A. They are both purple... except for the elephant. -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com Part of the development team for http://escape3d.com
articles in Scientific American
Hi ppls, The November 2000 issue of Scientific American has a bunch of articles on digital entertainment. In Oz our issues are always late so it is the current one here, but you guys will have to get it at a library or back-order it. There are 6 articles on the digital entertainment theme in there, but I expect the last 2 would interest you folks most: a piece by the legendary Alvy Ray Smith, "Digital Humans Wait in the Wings", and another by Glorianna Davenport of MIT Media Lab, "Your Own Virtual Storyworld". I found them interesting. There is a little bit of the info online at http://www.sciam.com but only enough to whet your appetite. Hope 2001 treats you all well. (Funny, it feels the same as last year.) Best wishes, - Miriam Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape? A. They are both purple... except for the elephant. -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com
Re: articles in Scientific American
Heheheh :-) Didn't realise you were a member of this list Robert. I must admit that after posting my email I looked up the Scientific American pages on the net and found that only your article featured online. I learned a lot from your article. I am grateful. I also noticed the Amateur Scientist article in that issue was on boids! How could I have not noticed that earlier??? It is also online with lots of links. Cheers, - Miriam At 06:41 PM 01/01/2001 -0800, you wrote: Well, hmph! I would think that an article by one of your own list members (albeit a quiet one!) in the same issue would rate as interesting as well! ;-) I was co-author of the article "Creating Convergence". It's a great issue, but unfortunately only a bit of it online. Robert -- Robert W. Saint John - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nearly News Productions, San Diego - Original Message ----- From: Miriam English [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, January 01, 2001 6:11 PM Subject: articles in Scientific American Hi ppls, The November 2000 issue of Scientific American has a bunch of articles on digital entertainment. In Oz our issues are always late so it is the current one here, but you guys will have to get it at a library or back-order it. There are 6 articles on the digital entertainment theme in there, but I expect the last 2 would interest you folks most: a piece by the legendary Alvy Ray Smith, "Digital Humans Wait in the Wings", and another by Glorianna Davenport of MIT Media Lab, "Your Own Virtual Storyworld". I found them interesting. There is a little bit of the info online at http://www.sciam.com but only enough to whet your appetite. Hope 2001 treats you all well. (Funny, it feels the same as last year.) Best wishes, - Miriam Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape? A. They are both purple... except for the elephant. -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com Q. What is the similarity between an elephant and a grape? A. They are both purple... except for the elephant. -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com
Re: storytelling tricks
At 02:09 AM 20/11/2000 -0800, Michael N wrote: "True" 3D worlds have more options to chose from... Depending on what the user did see so far, how his interaction did influence the upcoming scene behind the door, what stage the world is in ... etc. the camera could approach the transition between to locations differently each time. For example it could jump from a third person pov to a first person one or change to an extreme camera angle. I cannot play Resident Evil anymore, because I always get the same transition between rooms - what a wasted opportunity. This is one of the cool things about 3d... or should be. Because you have the freedom to move the camera anywhere just by giving it new coordinates it should be simple and a great incentive to vary the view. Video has it really hard by comparison: if they want to show a different view or use a wider lens they have to shoot it all over again, compress it, and save it on scarce mass storage space. 3d just has to save a few bytes. IMHO the mentioned western trail from nowhere to somewhere heads towards another discussion: Can a VR environment offer the pleasure of a road movie? Or does it offer the pleasure of a digital journey? Somehow the question of transition has to be solved very differently for these two ... u-o This touches on something that came up some time back on this list... making a story for the enjoyment of the journey rather than the final destination. It just occurs to me that it would lend itself well to open-ended stories, where the user affects the events.
writing scripts
I have been thinking about how best to script a 3d story. I have for some time enjoyed reading scripts and have often thought how writing 3d story would differ from writing a standard film script. I started writing a story a couple of years ago with the intention of making it as a work of VR Fiction (gotta find a less clumsy name than that). I began writing it as if it was a short story. That kinda worked, but it is hard to keep in the mode of writing it for VR; I found it too easy to drift back into normal writing habits, like mentioning what is going on in someone's head, and you can't show people's thoughts in VR easily. So I figured I need to adopt some format that keeps me restricted to what can be shown in VR. I am rewriting it as if I was writing a film script. The problem is that VR is different to film, even though this is a pretty standard film-like story with a ghostly, non-interactive viewer. (We need a name for that too.) Actually, writing it as a script seems to be working fairly well so far... I doubt anyone else has come up with any ways to write for VR Fiction... it is too early yet... but does anybody have any ideas that can help? Even with a fairly standard linear non-interactive format. (We really do need names for this stuff.) I guess ways to do this will just happen as people actually create it. Of course the really hard stuff is the interactive, non-linear formats. Do you have any way of approaching this stuff Paul? Or do you just do it as it occurs to you in a meandering fashion? (That is how I do many of my drawings... and many of my stories too.) [sigh] Cheers, - Miriam
Fwd: Re: storytelling tricks
I am forwarding this for Niclas. Cheers, - Miriam Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 18:20:55 +0100 From: Niclas Olofsson [EMAIL PROTECTED] X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en To: Miriam English [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: storytelling tricks X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by soran.pacific.net.au id EAA16627 Miriam et al, Always nice to see trafic on this mail-list. Hmmm, maybe that is because it never lasts :-) Miriam English wrote: There is a problem with VR Fiction in that it is difficult to know when to cut or fade to another scene if your viewer is able to wander around the world. You may have set up the story to deliver an important piece of info to build suspense then cut to another scene for dramatic impact. Or you may wish to use some of the time-compression tricks that books and cinema use, where a lengthy, but uneventful, period is cut from the story to avoid the audience becoming bored. IMHO.. A good story consist of a purpose and a surtain amount of sub-goals. A storys sub-goal is met when the current state of the story is equivalent to a surtain pre-defined (or otherwise defined) state. Users and/or agents are the actors responsible for changing the state of the story, thus driving the story in some direction by fulfilling sub-goals. In a typical VR story there are several ways users and agents can change the state of a story. Sensors on objects, locations, etc, are one way, state changed by time-aware agents are others. We call this interaction. An interaction that does not change the state of a story in a way that it affects a sub-goal is out of scope since it should/would most likely not drive the story in any direction. Where does transitions fit in then? Is transitions mearly an action triggered by fulfilling some arbitrary sub-goal or does it constitute it's own place in the theory? Maybe transitions is the poor author's tool to tightening up a discontinous story? Maybe it's just storytelling make-up? I believe that if you want to find an answer the question you need to look at if and to what extent transitions contribute to the purpose of a story, and perphaps even how they relate to sub-goals. How would you like to define TRANSITION? Cheers, /Niclas -- Niclas Olofsson - http://www.ismobile.com Product Development, isMobile, Aurorum 2, S-977 75 Luleå, Sweden Phone: +46(0)920-75550 Mobile: +46(0)70-3726404 How I wish I could enumerate PI easily 3. 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com
Re: storytelling tricks
[Miriam hits herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand] Why didn't I think of that?! This is a lovely idea -- they do it in noir detective stories too, in a different way. [voice-over] "I got a call from an excitable dame down on West 54th Street. She wanted to meet me at a speakeasy down by the docks -- smells like a set-up... that's where I was headed now..." But you would probably have to be careful to make it part of the atmosphere of the piece. Intrusive can equal annoying, as pixel-bitch (heheh) indicates. Cheers, - Miriam At 11:38 AM 19/11/2000 -0600, Rev. Bob 'Bob' Crispen wrote: The voices are telling me that Miriam said on Friday, November 17, 2000: - The user could be tugged gently toward the viewpoint where the important event is to happen. [snip] - The user could be attracted to the important pice of action by capitalising on psychology. If the plot point is delivered by a character, the character could simply go to the user. Or if the user is interacting with a character, that character could deliver the plot point. Of course, that could give us situations where the character and the user could be, uh, snuggling, and the character says "By the way, did you know that the telescope room rotates?" Come to think of it, I've seen that in TV dramas. Or you could have Pixie Bitch show up (that's what the MCPs in my family call the character in Zelda who's always interrupting you with "get back on track" messages while you're trying to complete youe skultulla collection or are in the middle of getting killed by Bongo Bongo). If we had a can of bug spray, she'd be history. -- Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen crispen at hiwaay dot net I plead contemporary insanity. How I wish I could enumerate PI easily 3. 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com
storytelling tricks
Hi folks, I meant to send this much earlier, but all my notes had got deleted from my Palm computer somehow, and hadn't been backing up properly to my PC... grrr :-( Anyway, here goes There is a problem with VR Fiction in that it is difficult to know when to cut or fade to another scene if your viewer is able to wander around the world. You may have set up the story to deliver an important piece of info to build suspense then cut to another scene for dramatic impact. Or you may wish to use some of the time-compression tricks that books and cinema use, where a lengthy, but uneventful, period is cut from the story to avoid the audience becoming bored. Here are 3 possible solutions to add to our toolkit: - The user could be tugged gently toward the viewpoint where the important event is to happen. The pull on the user could even be in proportion to the importance of the event. If the user wants to continue to explore they can easily resist a gentle pull, but ignoring the strong tug of an important event would be difficult. Playing out an amusing joke would have a soft tug associated with it, and a pivotal plot device would drag the user almost irresistably to the viewing position/angle. In both cases the tug is released as soon as the event is over so that the user is again free to wander. - The user could be attracted to the important pice of action by capitalising on psychology. Loud noises, bright or blinking lights, movement, certain sounds (telephones, baby cries, human screams, etc) are difficult to ignore and can bring the viewer to the scene without intruding on the user's sense of freedom. If a person looks in a direction fixedly or with some unusual emotion showing then that also makes audience members look toward the same thing. Magicians know all about these tricks -- how to direct a person's attention where you want it to go. Many artists, too, understand how to direct the viewer's attention around their picture (my own drawings are not as detailed as they appear because I tend to put detail only in the parts people look at). - The user could be confined by natural barriers. Locked doors, walls, cliffs, stampeding elephants, an impenetrably dark area, interior of a vehicle... Some time back on this list, I think, the question was asked as to how time could be compressed. Movies and books do it well. An example was given of a character grabbing her keys and exiting the room, getting in her car and driving to another place 20 minutes away. Writing that is easy -- I just did. Filming it is more difficult but still can compress 20 minutes down to just 20 seconds by cutting from scene to scene -- inside, external, inside car, arriving at destination. Making the same sequence in VR could be quite difficult if the user is allowed to wander, but here is one way it could be done. The actor-character can get a phone call which they don't answer immediately. Letting it ring for a while gives time for the viewer to become curious and come back to the room if they have wandered elsewhere. Then when she answers the phone she can be angry and yell at the person at the other end. This ensures that we have the viewers' attention. Being dramatic like this won't be necessary in the future when we have an understood set of signals that viewers will easily understand, but at the moment the art is in its infancy and we will probably need some degree of overkill to get our point across. Remember though, that loud is not always the best to way to get attention.[Some time back I was in a room crowded with people all talking, and two people started to whisper. Everybody in the room stopped to look and listen. The two ceased and looked self-consciously around the room. Everybody realised what had happened and broke into laughter.] Anyway back to the example... the character now asks something like "What? It is there now?! OK, this I gotta see! I am coming right now!". She hangs up and exits the door, runs down the stairs to the car looks in her pocket for the keys (giving the viewer time to catch up), unlocks it and gets in. Now she delays by putting on her seatbelt, finding the car key, perhaps looking at the street directory or finding the address written on a piece of paper, or waiting for a break in the traffic. This gives time for the viewer to get in the car. After a while the car pulls out into the traffic and drives off. Some way down the road the car car fades out and fades in near the destination. To the viewer inside the car this would be accepted as a cinematic trick to compress time because not only the vision but sound would have faded. The car would now pull in to the curb and the driver would switch off the engine and exit the vehicle. The viewer would follow, curious to find out the reason for the journey. OK, so there are a few tricks. Anybody think of other useful devices? Best wishes, - Miriam How I
Re: is this list still alive?
Heheheh. That was quick Sandy! Now I will have to sit down and compose that post. :-) Cool. At 10:15 PM 16/11/2000 -0500, Sandy Ressler wrote: Yeah it's my favorite listlove the traffic ;-) Sandy Miriam English wrote: Hiya peoples, I wanna post some stuff here... is it still up? testing...testing... :-) -- .. Sandy Ressler About.com Guide to Web3D http://web3d.about.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] .. Sign up for my free newsletter at: http://web3d.about.com/library/blnews.htm .. How I wish I could enumerate PI easily 3. 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com
invited Mark Pesce
Hi Peoples, I just invited Mark Pesce. I actually promised him some time back that I would let him know how to join, but work and my sieve-like brain delayed that. He expressed interest in VR fiction when I spoke to him briefly last month after he gave a talk over the phone to a large audience at the ElectroFringe Festival here in Oz. I have some possible solutions to VR Fiction problems posed by various people on this list. More shortly, - Miriam How I wish I could enumerate PI easily 3. 1 4 1 5 9 2 6 -=-=-=-=-=-=-- http://werple.net.au/~miriam http://web.access.net.au/miriam http://ariadne.iz.net/~miriam Virtual Reality Association http://www.vr.org.au AWABA - free kids' world http://www.awaba.com
Re: content on the Web
I am hoping to do some VR fiction in the next few months if I get time. I will probably be working on a system for a dance performance to input movements to avatars thru cheap webcams for the next few months (beats having to use mice, joysticks, and expensive data suits). After that I want to sit down and do some serious VR fiction. I have a semi-permanent job managing a multi-user virtual world at the moment so hopefully that will pay the bills. I have a story eating its way out of me at the moment. It is about VR -- I think that would make a nice self-referential base for my first piece of VR fiction. Best wishes, - Miriam - http://werple.net.au/~miriam/ Virtual Reality Association (VRA) Melbourne, Australia http://www.vr.org.au/
the psychology of cyberspace and virtual worlds
Hi people, I am on another list for women in VR, and Teresa Rivera posted this link to an amazing site: http://www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/ Fascinating stuff. Basically it is an online book of articles on the various issues surrounding virtual communities. What I have read so far seems very down-to-earth and useful for some of my story writing. Thought you bods might be interested too. Cheers, - Miriam --- I have a computer, a vibrator, pizza delivery. Why should I leave the house?
Re: Unidentified subject!
At 11:37 18/02/99 +1100, Miriam English wrote: Is that like unidentified object? :-) erk! please excuse that sudden fit of stupidity. (The problem with being a twit on the net is that it ends up on lots of other people's machines all over the world as incontrovertible proof of your imbecility.) [sigh] Apologies, - Miriam --- I doubt, therefore I might be.
Re: Unidentified subject!
Unidentified subject... [chuckle] Is that like unidentified object? :-) - Miriam (exits stage right, a-laffin' all the way) --- I doubt, therefore I might be.
cool content
You have probably already seen these, and I know they are slowed terribly by the current state of machinery, but for beautiful worlds check out the Chesley Bonestell dedications at: http://pluto.njcc.com/~paulsam/moonship/Welcome.html It is not interactive and doesn't tell a story, but it shows the photo-realistic end of the scale is there -- using ordinary vrml, NOW! If we make simpler, 'cartoony', interactive, animated stuff and bide our time, gradually the fps will increase allowing us to achieve stuff like the Bonestell tribute in full, animated, interactive glory. Even if there is NO improvement in vrml in the next few years (very unlikely), the ever-increasing speed of processors will bring it to us anyway. And what is wrong with cartoons anyway :-) I love Rocky And Bullwinkle, with its clunky animation, and childish backgrounds, and its wonderful humor. Cheers, - Miriam All general statements are false.
Re: More on nonlinear storytelling
I've seen non-linear stories which were good - not great perhaps, but they were written for young kids. Rose Estes' books from the Choose Your Own Adventure series of novels (should they be called novels? or perhaps branching short stories?). As for trying to make them come to a satisfying close, that was one of the compelling things about them. You would read the stories, taking the decisions you felt you should as they branched, and usually when you came to the end of the story it was an unsatisfying end, but you always knew that there was a satisfying "happily ever after" ending in there somewhere, so tended to reread the story, taking different choices until finally the story came out the way you wanted. I read one of the stories to my girlfriend at the time and was most dismayed when the choices she took came out for the best, on her first time through! Cheers, - Miriam --- WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexxmmeeaann??
