Cyberspace and mock apple pie: a vision of the future of graphics and virtual environments

We assume that in the future any user's display platform can render fantastically complex scenes. Having finally shed the concerns related to the computer graphics medium, developers will concentrate on the message. Content will be key-no longer will users accept nonsensical, artistically vacant environments simply because they're presented in a head-mounted display. This will also mean that static worlds, no matter how aesthetically pleasing, will come second to environments offering interactive content. The development and provision of dynamic content lie at the heart of the problem we face. For an environment to attract significant and regular participation, it must react in an intelligent and unpredictable fashion. Today, that intelligence can come from only two sources: live human collaboration and computer-generated autonomy. Collaborative VE research combines graphics, networking, human perception, and distributed computing issues. However, these facets betray a disappointing lack of coordination. Computer-generated autonomy (CGA) will certainly become inextricably melded with computer graphics. While this article focuses on other aspects of CVEs, the National Research Council's report on Modeling and Simulation provides excellent recommendations for future avenues of research in CGA, such as behavior adaptability and human representation. Many of the infrastructure requirements for CGA-enhanced systems with a large number of synthetic actors are the same as those needed for large-scale CVEs.