[rescue] replacing an Ultra2

[der Mouse]

>> This is a difference of degree, not of kind.  We already
>> deliberately shut off external stimuli, as when finding a dark quiet
>> room to play in to reduce distractions.
> The idea is to remove the sensor input that currently tells us that
> the game isn't real.  Controllers, keyboards, flat screens... those
> are constant reminders that we are outside of the game world.

Right.  There are many such; my point is that we already remove ones
that are convenient to remove.  Removing more of them will make the
gaming experience more immersive, but I still see it as a difference of
degree rather than kind.  Perhaps at some point human perception will
flip over and it will become, effectively, a difference of kind....

> At that point, the main thing telling you the world isn't real will
> be that it doesn't match the one you spent most of your life in.  It
> will be "lower resolution", and have all kinds of silly limitations
> and also incredible power in other areas.

Exactly why I want to play with it. :-)

There are a number of things I'd do with head-mounted per-eye screens
and a datasuit.  One of the first ones would be to give myself 3600
vision, to see if my visual system can learn to handle it.  (The human
visual system can learn to accommodate a surprising number of things,
such as mirrored or inverted input - I'd like to try this one, which,
unlike reversals or inversions, is quite tough to do non-virtually.)

> I use data structures, processes, and files as tools of the real
> world, not an imaginary world.  In fact, they specifically tie
> abstractions to the real world.

They do?

What real-world artifact corresponds to a process?  Or a file?  I can
come up with crude analogies for either, but in each case, I see the
differences as being greater than the similarities.  (Perhaps this is
just because I know too much about them....)

> For a game, I want abstractions that detach me from the real world.

There are a lot of things I wnat to try in game worlds, most of which
are more in the nature of experiments with my mind and perceptual
system than they are in the nature of escaping the real world.  (The
3600 vision is one.  Another one is to put myself into a 4D or 5D world
(seeing it through a 3D projection, of course) and see if in time I get
comfortable enough to develop for it something like the spatial
intuition I have for 3D.)

>>> The difference will be that the subject won't be in a lab with
>>> people to take them out of it, they'll be sitting alone in their
>>> gaming room, perhaps with no one checking on them.
>> Evolution In Action.
>> (Half joking.  But only half.)
> Even if playing in a world I might prefer to this one, I can't see
> putting that much time into it.

Perhaps not you.  But some people certainly do.

I recently started playing Final Fantasy XII.  (And not in a blank-tank
environment, either. :-)  Looking at my play time according to the game
and dividing by the number of days I've had it gives me a slightly
scary hours/day figure....

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