Automating virtual reality

The author discusses some applications of virtual reality and the limitations of interactivity. He considers how automatic simulated behavior minus the application judgment of direct human participation is already evolving in computer animation. In traditional animation, the animator explicitly controls every action of the characters, provides every cause, and determines every effect. While we think of virtual reality as the ultimate interactive technology, it is likely that only new tasks will be purely interactive. As applications are better understood, the ratio of interactive to automated processing will go down. We can expect anthropomorphic simulated humans to work on simulated projects in not necessarily visible virtual worlds