Unfortunatly I think this is true about alot of DS speak…

Why make it complex? 3D is a great way to communicate and share ideas! Why does it need to be a language?

Rich

thank you so much for your valuable comments. I’ll try to answer below.

@Sébastien: a very interesting link indeed! The multi-sensorial aspect is a key point to a complete experience. It is known that we use less than 10% of our brain capabilities. Who knows what we could achieve if we could unlock more, and if VR could help in doing so? Some kind of “total communication” where senses would be used as much as verbal or symbolic communication. Quite interesting

@Vincent: thanks for getting back to Egypt. Unas pyramid (VIth dynasty), the first one to present the pyramid texts. You’re perfectly right, 3D puts everything into its right place, where printing the texts in a book leads to choose a sequence which can be discussed forever. There again, the power of 3D is in the true experience.

@Hervé: thanks for writing the word “poetry”, because poetry comes from the ancient Greek “poein”, meaning “to create”

IMHO, poetry is the art of making words tell more than what they’re supposed to tell, just by a specific usage or alliance. It just shows that plain words are not enough to communicate.

Although what you’re saying about languages is right, it seems to me that you limit communication to VERBAL communication and the languages used for that purpose.

I guess you know that less than 10% of what we mean is conveyed by the words we’re saying. More than a third is conveyed by the tone of our voice (and it’s even more accurate with Asian Eastern languages, where the very same word will have dramatically different meanings according to the tone you’re using). Finally, more than half of what we’re communicating is conveyed by our body postures and our gestures.

This non verbal communication gets us back to pure, sensorial experience 3D is belonging to.

And I agree with you, efficient communication needs a combination of verbal and non-verbal communication, even if the high percentage of non verbal communication might account for my thoughts on 3D as a universal language.

@Jim: thanks for opening new perspectives (!) to this discussion. I appreciate your clarification and your post. As a matter of fact, you perfectly got my point. Rather than “language”, we cay telle about a form of communication. Fruitful exchanges, thanks for that

My blog from today is titled “What I Learned: 3D as Universal Communication” http://www.mbtmag.com/blog/1690000369/post/1420039742.html if you have comments/feedback

Or perhaps are you just making poetry?

A language is the result of everyday usage by millions of people. Languages that are used by less than 1m person just … die or slowly disappear (look at Yiddish nowadays).

A language changes everyday, mixes with other languages, takes different forms, either written or oral.

I would certainly agree that 3D can help make things clearer, but 3D is not – and may nether turn to be – a “language”.

I completely agree with the notion that 3D is the universal language and is an important part of communication.

The Dassault presentation describes Jean-Pierre Houdin’s theory well I’ve written about it on my blog, Talking Pyramids (www.talkingpyramids.com).

That project is particularly interesting to me because for the past few years I have been coordinating a similar project involving the three-diminsional reconstruction of another pyramid, the pyramid of Unas.

The pyramid of Unas contains the earliest and most complete version of the Pyramid Texts. As such it is the main source used by scholars studying the language and religion of the ancient Egyptians. These texts have been printed in books with a number of different translations but such a linear, two-dimensional presentation of the texts lacks vital information that can only be presented in a three dimensional manner. The very act of printing these texts in a book forces an arbitrary and artificial order to the texts, one that was not present in the original presentation of the texts.

This has caused some conflict amongst scholars of the Pyramid Texts. Indeed, there are differing views on the intended sequence of the texts. For example, some Egyptologists believe the texts should be read from the sarcophagus chamber to the entrance, while others believe the texts were intended to flow from the outside to the sarcophagus chamber deep inside the pyramid. Others still, prefer an architectural analysis and consider the position of the texts within the tomb to be directly related to the content of the texts.

That the texts were not written in a linear sequence like a book is clear. Therefore the most effective representation of the Pyramid Texts, in order to best understand them, is a three-dimensional one in which the reader of the texts becomes a visitor to the pyramid.

Once completed our digital recreation will provide the visitor with a richly detailed 3D experience with the ability to move through the pyramid and zoom in on the walls to read the texts with the optional addition of translations.

So you can see, here is a good example of the importance of 3D in regards to language.

Vincent Brown

http://cb.nowan.net/blog/2007/02/02/vr-to-create-a-new-communication-form/

I’ve been fascinated by the potential for “Post-symbolic Communication” for many years. (…) Suppose you’re enjoying an advanced future implementation of Virtual Reality and you can cause spontaneously designed things to appear and act and interact with the ease of sentences pouring forth during an ordinary conversation today. (…) Some of the most interesting data from VR research thus far involve Homuncular Flexibility. It turns out that the human brain can learn to control radically different bodies with remarkable ease. That means that people might eventually learn to spontaneously change what’s going on in a virtual world by becoming parts of it. (…)

Imagine a means of expression that is a cross between the three great new art forms of the 20th century: jazz improvisation, computer programming, and cinema. Suppose you could improvise anything that could be seen in a movie with the speed and facility of a jazz improviser. What would that mean for the sense of connection between you and someone you love?