This isn't to say that I'm squarely in the
no-teleporting camp: My worlds tend to have
teleporters, and I/we tend to use them.
But I regret it at times, and listen with
sympathy to the builders who feel teleporting
destroys appreciation for good building,
discouraging people from bothering to
provide good building, and ultimately
leaves the world thereby impoverished.
In a MUD I played once upon a time 3 years ago, people could teleport
everywhere. It was primarily a "social" MUD, and so what happend is
people would all teleport to 2 or 3 rooms and just hang out together
to chat. That left VAST stretches of totally uninhabited spaces
everywhere else in the mud. It was like a desert with oases, in many
respects.
As a social body, people in VR are probably worth looking at as a form
of fluid, or flux. If you have unlimited teleportation, then the
pressure through the valves is very, very weak. Good VR will probably
be conscious of the flow of spaces, and will make an art out of the
emptiness / fullness / motion of those spaces as people flow through
them.
White noise is utterly free of constraint -- and
utterly boring. It is patterns which bring
interest to a world, and every pattern you
introduce is of necessity a contraint introduced,
a freedom given up.
I disagree that white noise is utterly boring. After all, we see
patterns in it anyways. Relying on the mind of the audience to see
patterns that you didn't create is a powerful artistic mechanism.
One of the things I like best about VR is that
is forces people to confront old preconceptions
head on.
When reality provides all your constraints for
you, you can be lazy about understanding what they
really provide, and how they really work. When
you can create anything imaginable, however,
the crutch is gone, and you have to confront
truly analysing what you want.
That is perhaps why we see so many "polygon worlds." Such worlds are
merely following the new medium's path of least resistance.
Cheers,
Brandon