User talk:Jiwon

Hi, I'm Jiwon :) I'm Class of 2013, just declared Computer Science last quarter, thinking of minoring in Psychology or Biology, but we'll see how that goes. I spent most of my life in Korea (South, of course) and came to Stanford thinking of studying tissue engineering and such wet subjects but fell in love with programming. The most lovely part of coding is that it's sort of like writing an essay except instead of just talking about something you make it come to life! And that's exactly what this virtual world project is about, so I'm super excited :)

I am most interested in the different aspects of reality we can incorporate into/enhance in the virtual world. There is the fascinating problem of how we might create random natural elements like forests, wild animals, day-to-day weather, and such so that they behave "naturally" - what kind of landscapes/environments should we create? Should they be borrowed from reality branch by branch, squirrel by squirrel, or should we create some bizarre fantastical elements to make the virtual world unique? How shall the users interact with these natural elements? Maybe incorporate the allure of Pokemon and let the users capture wild beings and tame them? Maybe mold this into sort of a pet game? What about the sun, the moon, the stars, wind, rain, snow, hail, tornadoes, earthquakes - how can we simulate these so that they seem real? Will the virtual world be round like Earth? Will there be an end of the world (spatially)?

Also, I want to explore how to bring together all the blogging, facebooking, tweeting, and youtube posting - because these are all about broadcasting yourself; what if the user has his/her own room/house/cafe/etc. where one wall has all the photos, you can pick the user's photo albums from book shelves, which also carry the user's favorite books in ebook form, maybe serve the user's favorite drinks/dishes, the user's facebook status is written over the windowsill, the fridge is decorated with magnets or badges from foursquare, another wall is dedicated to posters of the user's favorite artists, a cd/dvd rack with the user's favorite music albums and maybe the user's own channel he/she can play on a virtual TV on the wall. It'll be the ultimate space to broadcast who you are. More, maybe there can be a way to implement Dr. Know from the movie A.I. by pulling information from websites such as wikipedia, the urban dictionary.

I'm going to be using software running on Windows to interact with the world.