In an ideal situation with no time and technology restrictions, many concepts could be implemented to further the immersive experience of playing a virtual musical instrument.

Real time sound synthesis

When creating an entirely new instrument, it would be very desireable to have it generate a sound unique to that instrument and not have to borrow from existing sounds. Unfortunately, doing real time sound synthesis i snot supported within the VRML environment. It is likely that this would be possible by exporting VRML data to another software package which does handle real time sound synthesis, but the technology needed for this was outside of the scope of this initial development time.

Dataglove control

A mouse is, from a musician's perspective, a far cry from actually touching an instrument. Technology allows for direct input by touch through either datagloves or full body suits. Circumventing the entire mouse issue is preferable, as it restricts performing to a single action at a time and that action can only happen in a flat 2-D plane. Using one's hands would prove to be a more effective and flexible route but the technology required for dataglove interaction was beyond the scope of this initial development time.

Tactile feedback

In addition to having a unique sound, every instrument has its own "feel." This tactile feedback allows the player to express emotion as well as retain a great degree of control over the instrument. At the moment, the technology to allow force feedback exists but is unavailable to us. Traditional instrument keys provide resistance and allow for extended musical expression.

Observation space

One of the more interesting concepts of our design is that an integral part of the instrument is the performance space. Problematic however, is that for any instrument to be really "performed" , it requires an audience, At this point virtual reality for multiple users is difficult to implement, as each viewer would ideally have their own point of view for the performance. Also, the currently existing CAVE has dimensions of only approximately 10 x 10 x 10 feet. The observation space/audience area in our instrument has a 30 foot diameter.