Virtual Reality Getting its Own Network? 82
loganrapp writes "We've all watched the Matrix, and regardless of how we felt about them, the concept of plugging into a virtual reality appeals greatly to us. It appears that a nonprofit group called the International Association of Virtual Reality Technologies plans to build a network purely for virtual reality. Its name? Neuronet, and the first generation is planned for 2007, with "consumer applications" planned for 2009. There is some fear, however, that the whole thing is a scam."
Re:huh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do *they* need to do this? I haven't a clue. I just don't see how VR applications are important enough to the rest of the world to have a separate network just for it.
Not a chance (Score:5, Interesting)
They talk about "not enough bandwidth" to transmit the necessary information.
But wait, there's more! There are so many unanswered questions. How do you connect (not by DSL or cable!)? What's the interface? Does it run on a computer, or a separate appliance?
On another note, this should not make references to the Matrix. It's nothing more than a Second Life, with lower entry requirements (for the providers, of course)
Cyberpunk much? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Not enough bandwidth" (Score:4, Interesting)
So we're looking at 10 gigabits/second minimum, for the kind of really heavy-duty traffic we're talking about, for any reasonable number of servers on that network. There's plenty of dark fiber around and I believe that the record for 200+ mile distances over fiber is in the order of around 4 or 5 petabytes/second. The backbone isn't going to be a technological problem, then. It would be damn expensive to light up enough to cover even as small a region as the United States, but it isn't impossible.
But that's the backbone. How do you get that traffic into people's homes? We're barely at the point of getting people to pay for single gigabit connections, never mind ten gigabit ethernet drops. The NICs are not exactly cheap either. And it's not just any old PC that can sustain a data stream through the PCI bus at those kinds of rates. You're looking at a fairly expensive piece of machinery, and one that is to be used not just solely for games (gaming machines are always expensive) but solely for games on that network. The more you use it for anything else, the less return you get for your investment.
Do I think this is a hoax? Yes. Because it's impossible? No, it could be done. But either it won't be done well enough to be worth having a new network for it, OR it will be too expensive for gamers.
On the other hand, a high-performance VR network for the scientific community, an order or two in magnitude faster than anything currently out there, could be done tomorrow and you're damn right that DARPA, CERN and the other Really Big League users could afford to pay the connection charges. Compared to the cost of the LHA in Switzerland, a ten gig drop per office in these labs that went to a secure petabyte trans-atlantic backbone would look like chump change.
Give a give a give a give a Garmin (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of it as like typing a street name into your GPS receiver.
Re:Sounds bogus to me. (Score:3, Interesting)
Damn I've never hear a better discription of those issues and I was at the commercial R&D birth of 802.11 gig PHYs (7 years ago...)
We knew that there were packet issues and such, but just getting decent protocol analyzers and such (SMB2000 IX1600) was a PITA for about the first year and a half. Broadcom's fuck-up of the spec on their first gen parts was no help either (but hey, anything to get to market first right?)
Even bypassing TCP/IP, the 802.11 spec has a ton of latency built into it, hence the popularity of Myrinet for some apps, in spite of the absurd per-port costs.
-nB