I think what you'd want to do is to keep the ratio of objects to space
about the same, but fill a larger space, so there are dozens of objects.
You might want to make the ground a sphere of radically smaller size than
a planet, so that new objects could appear on the horizon more quickly as
you move in a different direction. (Or, this might not work at all).
When I think about it further, it's not horizontal movement that's the
problem. It's vertical movement. The minute you allow people to go
aerial, you're effectively letting them perform size transformations
on the entire landscape. If they squash down to the level of an ant,
the world will look huge and very full, which is often what you want.
But if you let them helicopter way up into the stratosphere, then
suddenly all your compositional objects are just tiny, uninteresting
specks on the ground plane.
Overall, I would tend to see a Dalian world as less like a narrative of
any sort, and more populated by "events" that occurred whenever you walked
into them, and depended on how the user reacted. They would likely involve
something like the "life forms" that Justin brought up that didn't act like
people, but responded to events in their own esoteric manner.
This is one of the most important things that a surrealist virtual world
would get you that a surrealist 3D movie wouldn't (even an immersive one).
A completely non-linear narrative structure is something that more
multimedia artists are going to figure out how to leverage in the next
several years, and it feeds perfectly into surrealism.
Yes, perhaps it is best to let the audience figure out what the
"narrative" is. Thing is, most people _are_ going to look for a
narrative. An unfortunate set of cultural biases, to be sure, but for
the most part we're stuck with them. So it seems that it would
behoove us to try to _direct_ this narrative construction process in
some way. Most viewers will initially be delighted by a funny little
world of strange and wonderful events. But because they expect
narrative, they will quickly become bored. They will percieve such
worlds as having no CONTENT, because they lack narrative.
In order to avoid our viewers griping about "yet another trite little
watch that tells me what time it is," we need somehow to figure out
the difference between unrelated objects, realistically related
objects, and Surrealistically related objects. Unrelated objects have
no story to tell, and their recombination results in boredom.
Realistically related objects tell us what we already know, which can
also be pretty boring. Surrealistically related objects tell us
something more than all of this. They evoke our attempts to construct
meaning from the disparate. They involve the audience by teasing and
cajoling them into a symbolic process. They force us to dream
consciously.
Cheers,
Brandon