"Human brains are not particularly good at navigating in two dimensions," says Jim Bower, a Caltech biologist using virtual reality to study the brain.
"We have a lot more sophisticated power to deal with three dimensions. . . . You can readily navigate to where you want [and do so] more powerfully, precisely. 2D was an invention we were forced to deal with because of previously limited technology."
Bower stresses that "it basically comes down to what kind of a world the nervous system was designed to work in, which is basically the one we live in."
The intuitive nature of 3D navigation is the strength of virtual environments, which--together with scalable metacomputing and cyberspace tools--are the major technology directions at NCSA: