The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 35

THE GUARDIAN Thursday October 10 1991 COMPUTER 35 Take your partners the dildonics tango for The virtual reality baby is about to develop some grown-up attractions. John Coops charts the way towards simulated worlds stage. The machines in each centre are linked so that all users will be able to play together. Waldern envisages connecting the centres through Mercury's ISDN, the Integrated Services Digital Network, so that sites can play against one another across the country and beyond. He is excited by the prospect of a user in Tokyo using VR to dance with someone in New York.

"You'll be able to talk to one another while you dance. We're looking at the finance for satellite links." In industry, Waldern sees VR as the tool through which joint-venture alliances can develop. "The boom in video conferencing is a sign of the pressure for interactive dialogue. It is an exemplar of the need for international co-operation and consultation. "Using VR, a number of groups can pool their design resources on the same project and gain access to a bank of experience and knowledge.

Bach participant can enter the Cyberspace containing their new joint venture, and explore all its aspects as though they were physically present at the same place. You can enter the design world in real time with any companion." THE company's next product is a workstation for designers and engineers which will allow com acting, inside the simulated world. Industries' Virtuality leisure machine is the only one so far available. It took the Leicester company four years to develop it Now at 75,000 a pair, the machines are selling and one operator reports a return on his investment in 10 weeks. A new order for 14 units by a Tokyo night club shows the export potential.

Only 5 per cent of W's business is in the UK; almost all the phone calls are from overseas. Managing director Dr Jonathan Waldern is the first to admit that VR is in its infancy, and he believes that working on a leisure application has proved to be the best way to develop the technology. His leisure machine is at the forefront of application development. Three of its sets of co-processors were designed in-house; the other is a Texas Instruments 34082 40 megaflop Rise (reduced instruction set computer) chip. Waldern describes this array of processors as the multiprocessor.

"We're way ahead of Transputers" he says. Manufacturers are serious about providing products for virtual reality development VR drives the performance of the technology as much as the other way round, claims Waldern: "Virtual reality and hardware drive is interactive." His vision for development in VR leisure is global and lone- I A I At work and play with Virtuality soon the dancer in Tokyo wul De awe to taite tne Why the free program offers had to slow down. Jack Schofield describes a computer publishing phenomenon Discs that make the magazines' front page Information, Edinburgh. The Private Sector award went to Stephen Ross of Utell. The IT Manager of the Year was Bob Witt of BP Oil.

That Mr Knox is a keen Computer Guardian reader only emerged after the presentations when it was much too late to influence one of the judges, Computer Guardian's editor. Champions A TEAM from Trendsoft, from the Netherlands, won' the World Championship in 4GLCase Programming, in Stockholm last week. Sweden's Akribi Data, which has won the championship three times, could only manage second place. Hungary's Userland came third. Each team won a PC donated by Compaq.

The 24-hour programming contest drew 16 entries from eight European countries. The next championship will be held at the next DataKontorMOjo business exhibition in 1993. Too sexy OTHER news from Stockholm is that Helen Well-ton, who sells PCs, can no longer appear in her company's advertising. The Swedish Council Against Sexually Discriminating Advertising says her low-cut tops and sultry looks do not convey any information about the PCs she is advertising, reports Computer Talk. Wellton says "it is high time that women are accepted, even if they happen to have a big bust and do not dress like a man.

This is my style short skirts and a deep decolletage. The Council has violated me as a human being, as a woman, and as a She is taking her case to Sweden's equality ombudsperson. Power games MICROPROSE has released two new blockbusters, Gunship 2000 and Nighthawk F117A Stealth Fighter 2. Gun- ship 2000 is an updated version of the award-winning AH-64A Apache attack helicopter simulation. F117A has better graphics (smoke with cluster bomb explosions), spectacular night scenes and three new "worlds" (Cuba, North Korea and Iraq).

Both games cost 39.99. According to stickers on tne boxes, Gunship 2000 needs at least a 10MHz Intel 80286-based PC, plus the usual 640K of memory and a hard disc, while F117A needs a 16MHz 386 and VGA graphics. It's only a couple of years since the 386 processorVGA combination became the minimum sensible purchase for business buyers. With games like F117A and Wine Commander II coming out, it seems that's now become the minimum requirement for serious games players, too. OS2's rise ONE of the curious things about OS2, a moribund single-user operating system announced in 1987, is how the number of sales suddenly doubled.

One minute Microsoft was Quoting 300.000 and, it seemed, the next, IBM was saying 600,000. Naturally Microsoft boss Bill Gates phoned D3M, asking for more than $5 million in overdue royalties to cover the extra. And he got it Gates told the Wall street Journal last week that effec tively he'd told IBM to "pay up for those bragging D3M replied that "Mr Gates's claim is absolutely inaccurate" and that "we haven't paid a royalty to Microsoft for any licenses we haven't Still, it is small beer com pared to the 6 million copies of Microsoft Windows 3 sold since May last year. And 600,000 sales does not necessarily mean 600,000 users. How many copies of OS2 were bought to look at, and are now sequel, Spellcasting 201: the Sorcerer's Appliance, a second-year course.

But Bates wants to avoid Info-com's other problem: the release of too many games at once. "We will put out three games next year, and four games the year after, which is probably our limit. That's the way Infocom started, and it worked well. We know that we can do four games well, and we know that the market can support that many. But we don't know if it can support more, because in one year Infocom brought out seven or eight products.

I don't think that was necessarily one of their best years financially." Are the Infocom comparisons welcome, or will that give Legend too much to live up to? "I don't regard it as a bad thing at all," says Bates. "The connection with Infocom is wonderful, and the extent to which people think we are the heirs of Infocom is the extent to which we've succeeded. I don't know any company that has Infocom's reputation for quality, and such a loyal following; it was almost religious." Spellcasting 101 is published in the UK by MicroProse (29.99, PC only). It will also publish Legend's next game, Time Quest sueucasting 201 will De published in the UK by Acco lade. Ten classic infocom titles have just been re-released by virgin uames at 9.99 tor tne PC, Amiga, and Atari ST.

1 Jack Schofield Computer editor APPLE and IBM have now signed their agreement to use common hardware and operating systems. The erstwhile rivals are forming two joint venture companies, Taligent and Kaleida, based in California. Taleida will develop an object-oriented operating system using work already done under Apple's Pink project and by Metaphor Computer Systems, an IBM subsidiary. Tangent's system will run Apple Macintosh, OS2 and A1X (Unix) software. Kaleida will develop multimedia products based on technology from its parent companies.

AoDle and IBM will also adopt a new version of the Unix operating system called rower-Open. This will be derived from Apple's Aux, IBM's AiA ano the OSF1 Unix three different and incompatible versions. PowerOpen will run on Power PCs (workstations based on a single-chip implementation of IBM's RS6000 Rise system, to be produced by Motorola) and Motorola 680x0-based Apple Macintoshes. PowerOpen and the Power PC chip will be avail able to other hrms. Finally.

Annie and IBM will license each other's networking systems, AppleTalk and IBM Token Ring, to enable Apple's superior Macintosh computers to be fully integrated into corporate IBM-based systems. The deal raises more ques tions than it answers. However, while both firms have sold out" to the enemy, it looks as thoueh Apple has got most of the advantages: in effect, IBM is going Mac-compatible. Does that mean IBM is providing itself with the option to abandon the IBM PC-compatible market? Sun servers SUN Microsystems has launched a range of multi processor servers, the 600MP Series, running Solaris 1.0, a software environment that includes the SunOS version of Unix. Each system can have two or four 40MHz Sparc processors providing 51 or 91 mips (million instructions per second) of performance, or 121 transactions per second ($2,081 per TPS on the TPC-B benchmark).

Memory ranges from 64 to 640 megabytes, and disc stor age from 1.3 to 52 gigabytes. Prices start at 40,000. Pick DOS PICK Systems has launched a single-user PC version of its multi-tasking operating system, Advanced Pick on DOS. APDOS is now fully integrated with DOS, with Pick files stored in a DOS directory instead of on a separate hard disc partition. Pick is already available in several versions where it is fully integrated with Unix, though it is still sold mainly as an efficient business-oriented multi-user operating system.

Pick is hardware indepen dent and has a built-in relational database. Pick Systems says there are about 350,000 computers running Pick, serving more than 3 million users. ROSA results 1CL was named Open Systems Supplier of the Year at the first ROSA (Recognition of Open Systems Achievement) awards, sponsored by Data General. The award was based on votes by readers of Open Systems magazine. Three other awards were made by a mostly-distinguished panel of independent judges.

The Public Sector User of the Year was Knox of the Directorate of Health Service Unfortunately, it is a windy day and the fire is soon out of control. Three days later, Chicago is still ablaze Anyway, we do hot assume liability for things like this, even if the city is a small one like Mule-shoe, Texas." Spellcasting 101 showed that there was still a market for adventures, as Bates had suspected. "We were very pleased with how Spellcasting 101 did, and is still doing. When starting the company, we wanted to do the kinds of games that Infocom did, which were good games, but to avoid some of the things that reduced their popularity towards the end. EOPLEwhobuy computer games want the designers to take advantage of the features their computer can give them.

They want VGA graphics, they want sound, they want to be able to play the game easily, have a friendly and state-of-the-art interface; and these were things Infocom was not providing. It stuck too long to its tradition of text-only adventures. "I do dislike it when people say, 'Oh, you're doing text These are graphic adventures. There are pictures and you can play the game by clicking on the graphics just like any other game, though the story-telling still works through the text as well." SncllcastinG 101 was suc cessful enough to warrant a WTB73nE' puter designs to be examined in virtual reality. serious applications are developing fast, but the current buzz concerns dildonics: the application of VR to sexual excellences.

Howard Rhein- gold's new book Virtual Reality, published by Seeker and Warburg, contains much material about virtual-reality sex through the world telecoms network, and recent issues of Sunday Sport and Mayfair maga- version of the Wordworth word processor and several fillers. By this time the software houses were screaming. "It de values the product" said Jonathan Ellis of Pysgnosis. Why should people pay 25 for a game, perhaps of unknown quality, when they can get a good one for almost nothing? And how many games can one person play? Someone who is getting eight or 10 cover discs a month not impossible now that the weekly New Computer Express carries one has less incentive to go shopping for full-price or budget games. Publishers protested.

They had to do it because rival magazines were doing it Anyway, the software houses were supplying the games, so how could they complain? After a heated debate, all agreed that the practice had to stop. Now if you want a full-price game in W.H. Smith, you have to go to the software rack and get it in a box, not stuck to a magazine. The drawback with cover discs is that there is not an infinite supply of good software. Indeed, one of the attrac- zine describe the basics of "sex with your computer Dildonics users so far they lack a generic name will apparently don rubber suits equipped with sensors and effectors connected to their computer.

Mayfair suggests that users will have computer-generated partners, while Rheingold's perspective involves contacting "live" partners for real ecstasy in simulated intercourse. Given the level of existing technology, partial dildonics multimedia sex packages using CD-ROM, fast PCs, and a variety of bendy, flesh-simulating sex toys should be available soon. Waldern, the closest we have to a VR entrepreneur, says: "You should never be dismissive about anything embryonic. The technology is moving so fast, the people with vision must be entitled to describe what they see. Virtual reality sex is going to be about total emotionality.

I see a great need for therapy. Lots of people out there are emotionally damaged. All I can say is that Industries as a company would not want to be involved in virtual-reality sex because of the mums and dads. But the only definable thing is that developments in VR will take us all to the threshold of acceptability." VR is an example of convergent technology. Almost all the components exist and VR is combining them to provide the broadest possible interfaces.

Any number of situations, stranger or better than the ones we inhabit, may be created. The operator's "smart tool box" can generate any sort oi design as a product, a world, or a universe. The goal of total immersion is a long way off, but how long? If I knew what Intel was sit ting on now I might be able to give you an estimate," Waldern says. It will probably tell him first tions of sharewarePD is that specialised programs can be distributed cheaply; ones that would never make it if they had to sustain the heavy costs of conventional packaging, advertising, and dealer margins. Soon everyone will have all the DOS programs they need, and in the next year we can expect a Microsoft Windows 3 shareware boom: But what happens after that? Will people still buy when repetition sets in? Ingham points out that the magazines solicit and pay for programs written by readers, and this is fostering a new market Instead of being vehicles for (mainly) US-written shareware, cover discs could become part of the hobbyist scene and thus self-sustaining.

One magazine that already generates much of its own material is VNU's much-improved What Micro? which puts part of its mammoth Buyer's Guide on each monthly disc. The data come with Strange Software's fast data-viewing program which lets you sort PCs by type, make, and price. It's a big help with finding the PC or software you want, especially since each record includes the distributor's phone number. And given the speed with which the PC industry changes, the quarterly repetition of guide sections is one of its plus points. was planning, and then said they liked the game ideas, so why didn't I write them for Infocom? So I joined their team full-time, but working from home near Washington, DC.

And then the company went away and I thought, 'Oh no, I'm going to have to go out and get a proper But instead of a proper job, Bates resurrected his idea for an adventure software company and called it Legend. First he contacted another Infocom writer, Steve Meretzky (Zork Zero, PlanetfalL Stationfall) and asked hhn to come up with an idea for a game. "We knew from the start that we wanted it to be a bit like one of Steve's great successes, the Leather Goddesses of Phobos. We wanted it to be silly, funny, and a little bit sexy. And that's what we got." This adventure, Spellcast-ing 101: Sorcerers Get All the Girls, gave full rein to Mer-etzky's humour (in the United States, 101 indicates a first-year college course).

Even the manual for Spell-casting 101 has more jokes than the average game. The small print at the back contains wonderful disclaimers, such as: "Yon may be nlavine our name when a friend passing by is distracted by some of the graphics. He walks into a floor lamp. The lamp falls over, scaring your cat. The cat streaks from the room, upsetting a heater which sets some curtains afire.

1 ONE virtual reality machine is no use: it takes two to interact; and if you and your partner don headsets which connect you to your computers, together you enter the world of simulated, interactive game playing. Your aim is to shoot your partner, love himher though you may. There is your opponent, off to your right As you turn your head the computer moves the image. Almost in real time perhaps a trifle jerkily to the new user, the edges of the image flaring pixels you see the changing scenery that your host computer is creating. There is your opponent, like a screen sprite in red.

Columns interfere with your line of sight This is Industries' game, Nightmare. You play on an island in space, tiled in large squares. Shoot. A hit? No, a pterodactyl swoops, lifts you away, and drops you. Beyond the edge is limitless space.

In the newest Industries Virtuality game, so far unnamed and a few weeks from completion, the graphics are clearer and the movements smoother. The interaction with the machine's steering wheel moves you around a city. Foot pedals take you backwards or forwards. Another set of interactions produce the view you see as you move your head. Your opponent is in there witn you, somewhere.

These experiences may not be mind-blowing but they are different This is not a 2D arcade game, with competitors ranged against a computer-generated graphic. You and your opponent are operating, inter shareware programs that new-magazines are being launched to cover it PC Shareware was the first (Microfile, November 15, 1990) but two more have entered the market in the past few weeks. Europress has just produced the second issue of Shareware Shopper and Public Domain, and Future has launched Public Domain. Both cover the PC, Atari ST, and Commodore Amiga formats. Shareware Shopper costs only 1.50 a month, but it doesn't have a cover disc.

Its selling point is the serial publication of "the world's biggest shareware directory" as a pull-out supplement, already hole-punched for filing. The first two, totalling 120 pages, have proved useful. Public Domain, a bi-monthly, costs 2.95 and does have a cover disc. The tricky bit is that the same disc has to hold programs for all three machines. The Tri-format system, developed by Rob Northern Computing, works well and suits those who have all three systems.

However, I suspect most users are, in effect, buying only a Blake's progress; counting by situations, not numbers quate in various ways when it comes to representing and processing real-world information in a computer. And with computers now sitting on many (most?) mathematicians' desks, the claim that classical logic provides a meaningful picture of mathematical reasoning can no longer be maintained. When mathematical reasoning is done with the aid of a computer, using modern graphics techniques and hyper-media reasoning aids, it can be decidedly non-linear. And with the collapse of the linear approach comes the collapse of classical logic as a model for it. It was time to seek a new kind of logic: one that not only corresponds to modern computer-aided mathematical reasoning, but is also more appropriate for the kinds of reasoning that humans use in their everyday lives.

As far as finding a reasonable starter for such a theory, my money goes on the fledgling subject known as situation theory. This evolved at csli out of a study by Jon Barwise and John Perry in the late seventies. THE UK's biggest software retailer must now be W.H. Smith, not be- cause it sells computer games, but of ail the discs taped to the covers of computer magazines. Many magazines have one disc, and some have two.

And if the disc includes a 25 Atari or Amiga game, or a PC utility worth 50, the 2.95 cover price seems almost incidental. Most of the programs on cover discs are "public domain" (PD), or demos. PD programs are ones you can use free of charge. Shareware programs are distributed free so users can try them out, although if you want to use them regularly you must pay a registration fee (otherwise you should erase the disc). The demos are usually demonstration versions of commercial games, which software houses use as a form of advertising.

Most of these programs are available from other sources. For example, you can buy them from PD and shareware libraries for 1 to 3.50, or you can download them by modem from term. The company is setting up simulation centres witn up to six machines in the main UK cities and resorts. London's Trocadero was the first, Bedford and Nottingham will soon follow, and Manchester and Blackpool are at the planning third of a disc, and this may not bode well for long-term sales. Someone who just wants spft- ware is better on witn a macme-specifidTiiibh'catibn'.

Amiga Action and ST-Action, published by Europress, carry two discs per issue for 3.99. Each disc normally includes one or two demo versions of new games. Sometimes you get a whole level or playable subsection, and sometimes a limited version of the proper game: it is Pro Tennis Tour but you can play only three sets, or use one track on Super Cars (which "times out" far too soon). Having tried the demo, you rush out and pay 25 or so for the full game. Well, that's the idea.

This year the system got out of hand with magazines sticking 25 games to their covers, not just demo versions. Amiga Format gave away Balance of Power, and Amiga Power bundled Bombuzal. The apotheosis was the 220-page July issue of Amiga Format which, for 3.95, carried two complete full-price games Archipelagos and Vaxine as well as a demo They needed some new mathematics to investigate the way people use ordinary English to convey information. From there, the subject has evolved into a general framework for a theory of information and language. It is now being developed at Stanford and Texas Universities in the US, at Edinburgh and Manchester Universities in the UK, and at Icot and Sony's Research Laboratories in Japan.

My book, Logic and Information, describes the theory of information that emerges from situation theory. Situations, from which the theory takes its name, are somewhat analogous to numbers. But whereas numbers tell us how many objects there are in a certain part of the world, situations are themselves parts of the world. In this theory, information is always regarded as information about some situation, and is taken to be in the form of discrete items known as Like the physicist's particles electrons, protons, and so on that inspired their name, infons come in two kinds, positive and negative, but there the similarity ends. Infons are mathematical objects, much more like numbers than anything in the physical world.

I share the underlying view of the former SDF people that if there is to be a science of information, it will arise only from a massive research effort that crosses existing disciplinary boundaries. Logic and Information does not describe that sought-after science. It outlines just one approach, and maybe that will turn out not to be the right one. But we will only know that when we get there. Keith Devlin's Logic and Information is published today by camortage university press.

Mike Gerrard reports on the spellbinding Legend that rose from the ashes of Infocom Adventures in the resurrection trade uoor in Mew York City bulletin boards for the price of a phone call. -But many people find their local newsagent handier; and while" cover discs limit your choice of software, at least you get printed documentation and, in effect, a free magazine. It's good business for magazine publishers, too. Greg Ingham of Future Publishing, the firm that pioneered the concept, says a cover disc is an integral part of the appeal of publications such as PC Amiga Format, and ST Format "It's not just something stuck on the front" These magazines have all increased their sales during the recession; Amiga Format has doubled its circulation two years running, and is now selling 135,000 copies a month at 2.95 or 3.95. A dab at Calc reveals that this generates more than 5 million a year in sales, without even counting the hundreds of pages of advertising.

In revenue terms, it is one of the UK's biggest monthly magazines. Cover discs have stimulated so much interest in PD and called the System Development Corporation. When the SDC turned into a profit-making company in 1969, the $60 million profits generated were entrusted to a private foundation the System Development Foundation created to sponsor basic research into the information sciences. By far the largest single award, $25 million, was used in 1983 to set up an interdisciplinary research centre on the campus of Stanford University, called the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLQ. I was invited to spend two years there, from 1987-89.

It was one thing to say, "We need a science of information," but another to decide where to start looking. Logic was the obvious place, however; after all, this rich and powerful branch of mathematics had led to the design and construction of computers, and eventually the evolution of the separate discipline of computer science. It often happens that a triumphant offspring can expose weaknesses in the parent and such was the case with logic and computer science. Artificial intelligence was probably the first instance where classical logic was clearly seen not to live up to its promise (or at least to what a great many thought at the tune was its promise). But since then classical logic has been found to be inade- Why a science of information may be founded on infons.

Keith Devlin reports The search for a modern logic THERE was a wailing and gnashing of teeth among adventure game players when Infocom went out of business. This software house virtually invented the text adventure with the release of Zork (not forgetting Crowther and Woods' original Colossal Caves). Zork was followed by a long series of impeccable games such as the Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Bureaucracy, Beyond Zork, and about two dozen more. Some games sold so well more than 250,000 for Zork and the Hitchhiker's Guide that it was a surprise when the firm announced financial problems. A takeover by Act! vision did not work out, and eventually the various members of the Infocom team split up.

Some, like Dave Lebling who wrote The Lurking Horror, Suspect, Enchanter and most of Zork, are no longer in the adventure game business. But the Infocom spirit lives on in Legend, an American software house formed by Bob Bates who wrote two of Infocom'8 last titles, Sherlock and Arthur. "I was their only outside writer," he says. "I had been a freelance and started my own company to write adventure games in 1986-87. 1 wanted to write the kinds of games Infocom were doing, so I asked about licensing their development system.

"They asked what games I IS IT possible to buy a new science? Or at least, can you speed the development of one by throwing lots of money at the problem? The California-based System Development Foundation (SDF) thought it worth trying: in 1983 it put up $25 million to help to establish a science of information. Although information technology draws on a number of scientific theories and results, it does not rest on a genuine science in the way that say, physics underpins electronic engineering. This is hardly a novel state of affairs: the Iron Age preceded geology and materials science by thousands of years. There is always the thought, however, that if only we had that scientific theory we could advance the technology much more rapidly. This is where the SDF came into the picture.

But just what is the SDF (or, more precisely, what was the SDF, since it was dissolved in 1989) and why was it interested in a science of information? The story begins with the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, which formed a small research group in the fifties to develop Sage, a computer-controlled air-defence system, to protect the US against air attack. The group grew and was eventually spun off as an independent, non-profit-making firm.