WHY? well this is what I think...
A Gardeners works I would say with TIME it self , Time and space.
There my be many artist how do, and same would say that
all artist do. But I would say that it is fundamental to the creative
act of Gardening.
( I hope the Time point is self exsplanitory ,
Planters grow in time,
the scsenes hapen in time, winter, fall, spring, summer,
year apon year etc)
I think this could be a very interesting way to construct a virtual
world. Perhaps some kind of evolutionary system? I've seen examples
of such systems at SIGGRAPH, where "plants" are grown over time and
a human being picks out the plants he/she likes, so as to influence
the evolutionary development.
Caperbilaty Brown planterd a Vast garden near me in which
an avenew of trees were planted.
Theres trees tuck 150 years to grow to there full size.
Now thats Creating in TIME
On the other hand, I really can't see "gardening" as a metaphor that
explains the fundamental nature of VR better than anything else. VR
does have an enormous "landscape" element, and people do traverse that
landscape over time. But nothing in VR takes "a long time to grow,"
as it does in gardening. Quite the opposite - you want an object, you
immediately drop it into the VR world. There is no growth process per
se. Any growth process would have to be explicitly simulated, with an
evolutionary system or something.
I think that there are aspects of gardening that relate very well to
VR, and certainly gardening can be very inspiring to VR. But I really
can't see gardening as a "better" metaphor for VR than Escher-esqe
landscapes. Each provides some good facilities for talking about VR,
and neither explains what VR is or could be.
Understanding Time and controling random elementas are the keys
to some formers of gardening ( so i belive)
If this is right then Gardeners could become a good staring point
for comprehending the act of creating a VRWORLD ?
That is a flued VR world ( agan so i belive)
Is this right?, can any add to this ?
All so there are some things that Gardeners do that do intrigue me.
Like when they plane a garden. It is just as important to them
to think of the experiences of traversing the garden as it is the
of visholizing Vista vow points (g.e. points of static observation
with in the landscape from which the vower/navigator
sees a preset vow of the Garden). This traversing could be completly
random so the trick is to offer a kind of root for the vower/navigator
to follow with out it being to ovus. All so to make the Vista vow points
notisabull as to make the vower/navigator stop and look.
Your idea of "random vistas" is intriguing. Often when I look at a
really good garden, or a well-landscaped neighborhood, I have the
strange sensation of being in a virtual world of sorts. It certainly
isn't a natural world, since everything is so meticulously laid out.
Finding out what "centers of interest" are actually interesting would
be - well, interesting. :-)
Cheers,
Brandon