I'll Be On Holodeck Four If You Need Me

Do any of you remember the whole "virtual reality" craze of the 80s and 90s? VR was the new frontier of computer graphics, the holy grail that everyone wanted to find. I can remember spending my hard-earned bucks at XS, the massive arcade in Times Square, just to play all of their virtual machines. I put on those bulky goggles, stepped onto the pad/into the chamber, and I was THERE, in the game. Virtual Pac-man didn't have the allure I'd hoped; virtual rifle arcade was fun, but keeping that damned rifle up was exhausting! Virtual racing was fun, but only lasted seconds - and as new and different as all those games were, the bulky equipment you needed always detracted from the feeling of immersion.

Which leads me to ask, given today's graphics technology...what IS virtual reality? Today's MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) games allow you live a virtual, online/computerized life if you so choose. Worlds of Warcraft, Dark Age of Camelot, Everquest, even the Sims - virtual worlds, 3-D environments, chat, interactivity with living people instead of AI drones; that was the vision we all had for VR. So why don't we CALL it VR? It can't be the immersion factor; there are gamers who spend more of their lives online, earning a virtual living and having virtual relationships, than they do in the so-called real, or physical, world.

So what makes it different that we don't use the term VR anymore? It's because we once thought we'd find a way to physically enter these virtual worlds - not just type on a keyboard or manipulate an avatar with a mouse, but we'd be able stand in the middle of a virtual landscape, turn from left to right and see the world around us.

We're not as far from that as I once thought.

Iowa State University has a six-sided, 10ft x 10ft virtual reality room that surrounds users with a graphics resolution of 100 MILLION pixels.

The University first opened its room, the C6, in June 2000 as the country's first 6-sided virtual reality room. The difference between the equipment currently in the C6 and the updated technology to be installed this summer, “is like putting on your glasses in the morning,” said James Oliver, the director of Iowa State’s Virtual Reality Applications Center and a professor of mechanical engineering.

The new equipment – a Hewlett-Packard computer featuring 96 graphics processing units, 24 Sony digital projectors, an eight-channel audio system and ultrasonic motion tracking technology – will be installed by Fakespace Systems Inc. of Marshalltown. The project is supported by a U.S. Department of Defense appropriation through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The project began this spring with a prototype upgrade to one wall of the C6. The remainder of the work will continue throughout the summer. Oliver said the improved C6 will open in the fall. A grand opening celebration is being planned for the spring of 2007.

Oliver is leading a research team that’s developing a virtual reality control room for the military’s unmanned aerial vehicles. The researchers are building a virtual environment that allows operators to see the vehicles, the surrounding airspace, the terrain they’re flying over as well as information from instruments, cameras, radar and weapons systems. The system would allow a single operator to control many vehicles.

The C6 upgrade will move that project forward, Oliver said.

“The idea is to get the right information to the right person at the right time,” Oliver said. “There’s a tsunami of information coming toward you and you have to convey it effectively. We think this kind of large-scale, immersive interface is the only way to develop sophisticated controls.”

Now if they can get together with the Japanese and Koreans and incorporate some of those androids...we've got a Holodeck in the making, people.