Really great comments on yesterday’s post, thanks!
Rhema mentions the drawing room in VRChat. I totally agree that just drawing in the air together in 3D doesn’t give you the power-up you want. Our research group at NYU started doing that in Fall 2014 — some of our earliest research can be seen HERE.
What we found was that although people found it to be fun, they didn’t find it to be particularly useful or essential. Certainly not as useful or essential as a whiteboard.
Interacting with another person in VR is just not as rich as interacting with them in real life. There are so many cues of facial expression, hand gesture and body language that we use when we communicate, and such things don’t translate well into shared VR.
That’s why I think it really needs to be AR. You need to be able to see the face and hands and body of the other person, and they need to see you face and hands and body.
Also, the computer needs to be adding something more powerful than shared 3D display. What computers do well is simulate, and we would at least need to incorporate the power of simulation into our 3DBB — just as Professor Whoopee did back in the day.
I agree with Adrian that videos are very powerful, but I’m hoping for an evolution in interactive explanations. That wouldn’t be something that needed to be produce beforehand, but something that arises organically, in real time, in the course of conversation.
Yes to Möbius strips!! 🙂 🙂 🙂
I didn’t mean to suggest that the videos had to be pre-made. There are lots of times I wish I could generate an animation on the fly during the course of a conversation/collaboration/explanation.