Pioneers band together to launch location-based entertainment

Four of the premier companies working on technologies for virtual reality have banded together in an alliance designed to launch the nascent technology sector into the world of real products.

Virtual reality, or “VR,” is the buzzterm for the creation of synthetic, simulated experiences and their delivery systems, such as headgear and data gloves.

These experiences come in two forms: virtual environments, immersion in a computer-generated “reality”; and remote presence, which uses remote cameras and sensors to allow people to “be” in a real place that’s physically distant.

Spearheading the new alliance is Palo Alto, Calif.-based Telepresence Research, founded in 1990 by Scott Fisher and Brenda Laurel. Fisher was director of the Virtual Environments Workstation (VIEW) project at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Labs for five years; Laurel is a 15-year veteran of the software industry, including the seminal Atari Labs in the early 1980s.

Next: A Telepresence Powerhouse

The Telepresence Alliance is one of the most hopeful signs for VR since the hype began a couple of years ago. Its members have developed seminal technologies or processes that have been used in VR and in applications ranging from the entertainment industry to aerospace. Together, they cover all the technology bases required to make VR a success.

Crystal River Engineering of Groveland, Calif., first designed and manufactured a 3D digital audio system for the VIEW Lab at NASA Ames. A critical component of VR, its system, called the Convolvotron, simulates the acoustics of a room and allows the listener to experience sound in virtual space the same way that we do in the real world. Thus, a computerized object’s sound diminishes as it moves away from the listener; when the listener turns away, the sound changes proportionally to whichever ear is closer to the object.

Fake Space Labs of Menlo Park, Calif., specializes in display technology and software. Believing that the much-ballyhooed head-mounted viewers are too cumbersome and don’t provide a very high-quality image, Fake Space invented the Molly, a remote camera platform, and the BOOM, a high-resolution, free-standing stereoscopic display that lets viewers move freely in environments generated either by computer or by camera without “suiting up.”

Michael Naimark and Co., based in San Francisco, is best known for its work in “surrogate travel” via video maps of Aspen, Paris, San Francisco and Karlsruhe, Germany. Interactive multimedia and videodiscs and alternative display environment designs are the firm’s specialties, and much of Naimark’s work has been done for the world’s finest museums.

A few names on their combined client roster are Lockheed, Bell Communications Research, Stanford Research Institute, Walt Disney Imagineering, Lucasfilm, City of Paris, the U.S. Armed Forces, MIT Media Lab and National Geographic.

At last month’s Siggraph show in Las Vegas, Alliance members were responsible for four of the 16 VR installations within the show’s new “Tomorrow’s Realities” exhibit.

Next: ‘Location-Based Entertainment’
VR has been (prematurely) credited with the ability to enhance all forms of human experience, from creating a drug-free “acid trip” to helping architects design buildings more effectively. Today’s virtual realities rely on hardware and software systems costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But Alliance members are pioneering what they see as the first viable commercial application for these virtual environments: location-based entertainment, such as high-tech theme parks and museums.

Becoming the game. Virtual-reality theme parks are considered to be the hottest growth area for VR/simulation technologies today. In Japan alone, say Alliance members, 200 such parks are already in the planning stages. Such disparate Japanese interests as department stores, airlines and furniture makers, all of which want to catch the next big entertainment wave, are researching investments in VR theme parks.

Smaller than traditional U.S. theme parks such as Disneyland, venues for location-based entertainment are more akin to video arcades. Fisher says that video-game developers such as Sega, for example, are already planning arcades with VR installations in mind. In a world that seems demonically possessed by video gaming, such theme parks would allow gamers the ultimate experience: to become part of the game itself. One such arcade recently opened in Chicago.

Pay as you play. “Four years ago, a (video game cabinet) cost $5,000 to $7,000,” says Laurel. “Many of today’s cabinets are already using motion platforms and VR-style technologies with six-figure price tags.”

Placing VR in public places that charge admission fees, say Alliance members, is a logical way to make such installations pay for themselves and to iron out the kinks that keep the cost of VR too high for one-on-one installations. “The throughput of bodies can be smaller” than a Disneyland-style park, says Laurel. “We can build to a $250,000 platform which will pay for itself quickly enough.”

Other possibilities include the ability to, say, “swim” around the Great Barrier Reef from the mainland without touching a drop of water. Museums are also exploring the possibilities of creating environments to allow visitors to “virtually” wander through the solar system, planetarium style, or through dioramas such as those often found at natural history museums.

Next: NO MORE STUFFING BUFFALO
The cost benefits to museums, which are typically strapped for cash and/or raw material, are formidable. “It’s easier to copy a disk than to stuff another buffalo,” says Michael Naimark.

Despite the Alliance’s obvious talents, it seems that investing big research dollars to launch a new entertainment medium in a sliding global economy would be more than a little iffy. But Alliance members say the research money is out there, and they are undaunted. “The bad news is that the economy is bad,” says Mark Bolas of Fake Space. “But that always means that the entertainment business gets better.”

- Denise Caruso