Posts by Skylab72

Microsoft founder Paul Allen reveals world's biggest-ever plane

Re: Hang on...

Nope, just a heavy lifter build with spare 747 parts.

AR and VR in data visualisation – can it ever be useful to our puny human minds?

More to it than that

While I appreciate the timeliness and significance of the issues in Mr. Matthews article, I am disappointed in the myopic view presented. From the top there was no identification of the core issue which is actually an old one, man machine interfaces. Over fifty years ago we identified a core principle that so long as direct wetware - hardware interfaces remain a pipe-dream, will remain paramount. “Man rate the machine AND machine rate the man.” The idea being no matter how “intuitive”, humans will need “experience” with any complex system to achieve anything near optimal effectiveness. Never forget wetware is a neural network, and neural networks thrive on “training”.

Secondarily, I was disappointed there was zero mention of the “Giants that have gone before”. The power of the scientific method is in the accumulation of data, information and knowledge. Ignoring the incredible contributions of brilliant practitioners who precede you leaves you to spend much time re-inventing the wheel. Specifically, given that the whole motivation to promote both AR and VR in rooted in the fact the broadest bandwidth channel available into wetware is visual, one would be crippled to be unaware of the work of Edward R. Tufte.

Lastly, allow me to urge resisting the temptation to shoehorn solutions into problem domains. Both AR and VR will be game changers in selected domains. There is no AR Versus VR, there are only real world problems. Some are more effectively attacked with one tool, others are more effectively attacked with another.