Tron was an incredible vision of what's going on in virtual space.
Lawnmower Man also had some impressive visuals at the time.
...Then cyberspace just went away.
Now it's let make the most realistic dirty warehouse and grassy field we can.
I've got nothing against hyper detailed town squares BTW, I'm just wondering
where the vectors went.
The only modern shows that come to mind are REBOOT and .hack//Sign.
...Oh almost forgot about REZ and G.I.T.S S.A.C. 2nd GIG.
I'd love to fly though some virtual hallways fighting programs/viruses
in a game for a change.
With all the effects we can produce nowadays virtual space can be filled with
amazing artistic abstractions.
So why aren't there any big cyber style games?
What ever happened to cyberspace?
Author
What ever happened to cyberspace?...
Tron was an incredible vision of what's going on in virtual space.
Lawnmower Man also had some impressive visuals at the time.
...Then cyberspace just went away.
Now it's let make the most realistic dirty warehouse and grassy field we can.
I've got nothing against hyper detailed town squares BTW, I'm just wondering
where the vectors went.
The only modern shows that come to mind are REBOOT and .hack//Sign.
...Oh almost forgot about REZ and G.I.T.S S.A.C. 2nd GIG.
I'd love to fly though some virtual hallways fighting programs/viruses
in a game for a change.
With all the effects we can produce nowadays virtual space can be filled with
amazing artistic abstractions.
So why aren't there any big cyber style games?
Tron was an incredible vision of what's going on in virtual space.
Lawnmower Man also had some impressive visuals at the time.
...Then cyberspace just went away.
Now it's let make the most realistic dirty warehouse and grassy field we can.
I've got nothing against hyper detailed town squares BTW, I'm just wondering
where the vectors went.
The only modern shows that come to mind are REBOOT and .hack//Sign.
...Oh almost forgot about REZ and G.I.T.S S.A.C. 2nd GIG.
I'd love to fly though some virtual hallways fighting programs/viruses
in a game for a change.
With all the effects we can produce nowadays virtual space can be filled with
amazing artistic abstractions.
So why aren't there any big cyber style games?
The term you might be looking for is cyberpunk. It's my favorite color.
My project is heavily cyberpunk influenced. And yep, there is a cyberspace. Characters will be capable of controlling hardware devices and looting valuable data from it, among other things.
I don't know of many recent cyberpunk games, other than a few generic MMO titles. Most games go with futurism or fantasy, but everyone seems to forget about cyberpunk. I'd give just about anything to play a decent single player cyberpunk role playing game.
My project is heavily cyberpunk influenced. And yep, there is a cyberspace. Characters will be capable of controlling hardware devices and looting valuable data from it, among other things.
I don't know of many recent cyberpunk games, other than a few generic MMO titles. Most games go with futurism or fantasy, but everyone seems to forget about cyberpunk. I'd give just about anything to play a decent single player cyberpunk role playing game.
Quote:Original post by Art_Sempai
What ever happened to cyberspace?...
The internet.
At the time of the works you cite - Tron, Lawnmower Man - people had not experienced the internet, so the idea of it as an experiential other world was below the suspension of disbelief threshold. Now that everyone's online, we recognize that VR crap as fanciful. There will never be a cyberspace in that sense; any experiences of that sort we have in the future will be closer to Star Trek's holodeck, the SQUID recordings of Strange Days, the experience booths from the Minority Report film adaptation...
It's still useful as a stylistic cliche - Rez employs it to good effect, for instance, and it serves as a useful metaphor for an AI traversing a network (seen in Halo, as well as the Ghost in the Shell series) - but that's about it.
Quote:Original post by OluseyiQuote:Original post by Art_Sempai
What ever happened to cyberspace?...
The internet.
At the time of the works you cite - Tron, Lawnmower Man - people had not experienced the internet, so the idea of it as an experiential other world was below the suspension of disbelief threshold. Now that everyone's online, we recognize that VR crap as fanciful.
But that's like saying we don't enjoy the concept of space exploration anymore because we now understand how fictional those old space shows were. Cyberspace as an electronic universe that can be experienced through a neural interface is still both imaginative and plausable, and a concept that's far beyound the capabilities of the internet. The implications of directly connecting a human brain to a computer are limitless.
Quote:Original post by Kest
But that's like saying we don't enjoy the concept of space exploration anymore because we now understand how fictional those old space shows were. Cyberspace as an electronic universe that can be experienced through a neural interface is still both imaginative and plausable, and a concept that's far beyound the capabilities of the internet. The implications of directly connecting a human brain to a computer are limitless.
However, I think there is a difference here, between our understanding of space and virtual space. In the space/sci-fi games, movies, and novels we have right now that are still popular, they have subjects of aliens and fantastic new worlds, because we still haven't discovered life beyond Earth - so that is still in the interest of the mass populace.
For virtual space however, there is no single idea or concept that is so mysterious or fantastic anymore. Computer viruses? Heck, we are more annoyed with them than we are mystified with them, and plus we have antivirus software now we just download and install. The manipulation of information? We do that all the time. There is no virtual space's equivalent of "alien" or "fantastic new world", for our digital progress is accelerating at an exponential speed, while our space program seems to be decelerating due to economic reasons, lol.
There is still virtual reality, but because we now have 3-D games that are widely known across the world, people don't see this concept/idea as mystifying anymore.
Quote:Original post by Kest
But that's like saying we don't enjoy the concept of space exploration anymore because we now understand how fictional those old space shows were. Cyberspace as an electronic universe that can be experienced through a neural interface is still both imaginative and plausable, and a concept that's far beyound the capabilities of the internet. The implications of directly connecting a human brain to a computer are limitless.
We still enjoy the concept of space exploration, but our notion of it has changed considerably. If you examine works from before we left earth and after, there is a general shift in the level of optimism as well as the focus of the narratives: works from before focus on a sense of adventure, on possibility and potential, on discovering the nature of planets; works from after focus on the threat of alien intelligences from far away galaxies with hostile intent, on our responsibility not to litter and damage the cosmos with our space junk, or the philosophical question of our place in the universe.
Factual experience with a fiction reshapes the future nature of the fiction.
Its called World of Warcraft. Think about it, the whole idea of people putting themselves inside the computers, adventuring around inside of a digital landscape? Its more or less the same thing, but instead of seeing a landscape of data, we have shaped it into something more understandable.
Want to walk through cyberspace looking at the data? Browse the internet by hand reading and sending the network packets ;)
While Virtual Reality might be a relic of the early 90s, you should do some research into Augmented Reality, its not a fanciful far-fetched dream.
Want to walk through cyberspace looking at the data? Browse the internet by hand reading and sending the network packets ;)
Quote:Original post by Oluseyi
Now that everyone's online, we recognize that VR crap as fanciful.
While Virtual Reality might be a relic of the early 90s, you should do some research into Augmented Reality, its not a fanciful far-fetched dream.
Another game that deserves mention is System Shock 2. I think it may have the most recent gaming cyberspace I've experienced.
It's actually the matrix (uncapitalized). I was hacking into the matrix when I was 12 years old, playing Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis. They are in fact one and the same. The matrix is cyberspace, and it existed long before the movie trilogy. The movies are actually named The Matrix because it was already another name for cyberspace.
Like I said, limitless implications. There are no rules or boundaries for what can transpire in cyberspace. Likewise, there are no limits for the use and application of cyberspace. It's impossible to fully explore or discover it.
3D games are missing the most appealing aspect of cyberspace. Manipulation of the real world. Or in the case of a game, manipulation of the real game world. Any type of unrealistic concept can be put into cyberspace as a means to obtain any real-game-world goal. For example, you could do battle with flying hacker personas that have teleportation and energy blasting powers (through illegal software and cyberspace-glitch exploitation) to overload and destroy a real-world power generator of the enemy.
In a way, cyberspace is a game designer's dream come true. You can create a very realistic game world, then provide massive amounts of gameplay features to interact with it that are completely unrestricted by realism.
Quote:Original post by dmatter
I think today's kids have rebranded cyberspace as The Matrix.
It's actually the matrix (uncapitalized). I was hacking into the matrix when I was 12 years old, playing Shadowrun for the Sega Genesis. They are in fact one and the same. The matrix is cyberspace, and it existed long before the movie trilogy. The movies are actually named The Matrix because it was already another name for cyberspace.
Quote:Original post by Tangireon
However, I think there is a difference here, between our understanding of space and virtual space. In the space/sci-fi games, movies, and novels we have right now that are still popular, they have subjects of aliens and fantastic new worlds, because we still haven't discovered life beyond Earth - so that is still in the interest of the mass populace.
Like I said, limitless implications. There are no rules or boundaries for what can transpire in cyberspace. Likewise, there are no limits for the use and application of cyberspace. It's impossible to fully explore or discover it.
Quote:There is still virtual reality, but because we now have 3-D games that are widely known across the world, people don't see this concept/idea as mystifying anymore.
3D games are missing the most appealing aspect of cyberspace. Manipulation of the real world. Or in the case of a game, manipulation of the real game world. Any type of unrealistic concept can be put into cyberspace as a means to obtain any real-game-world goal. For example, you could do battle with flying hacker personas that have teleportation and energy blasting powers (through illegal software and cyberspace-glitch exploitation) to overload and destroy a real-world power generator of the enemy.
In a way, cyberspace is a game designer's dream come true. You can create a very realistic game world, then provide massive amounts of gameplay features to interact with it that are completely unrestricted by realism.
But as long as some aspect or idea of it is not understood to be a hot topic in the general populace, then you won't have as many movies, games, or whatnot based upon that subject. Aliens and things are still unknown hot topics, cyberspace is not. Until we actually have our hands on another concept/idea that has its basis on fact/rumor while being unknown, then the subject won't appear in fiction as much. In order for something to be mystifying and popular it first has to be made plausible to which it then becomes popularized (such as rumors of Roswell and ETs). Neural-computer interfacing and other limitless possibilities will not enter into the mass popular understanding until we actually have a prototype of it, or that scientists actually say that they can make one - but by then probably a few months later it would be mass-produced due to our exponential growth of technology.
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