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| The Futurist on VR |  Virtual reality is getting real: Prepare to meet your clone. By: John C. Briggs The Futurist 05/01/02 Virtual reality is not yet an everyday reality, but in the next 10 to 20 gears, VR experiences will be fully integrated into reel life. We'll "attend" meetings, practice surgical techniques, travel to exotic places, test design flaws before building things, and create digital clones to be our representatives in virtual worlds. Virtual reality is advancing rapidly, though almost unnoticed. VR is beginning to be used extensively in avatar creation, assistive technologies, communications, design, engineering, entertainment, medicine, and many other fields. In both the near-term and longer-term future, it will be used even more extensively and in sometimes surprising ways. In 1996, VR was being overhyped, and many of us were forced to caution readers to keep a sense of perspective. Many people, including VR practitioners, took that advice. Virtual reality, or at least the term, went into hiding. "Virtual reality went underground," says VR expert and developer Bill Coyle of visualpark.net. "Even software vendors pulled the plug." Two of VR's key magazines, VR World and VR Special Report, folded. Coyle believes the term VR will soon come back into vogue, but clearly we need a reality check on virtual reality. What Is VR? Virtual reality is best defined as a computer-generated 3-D experience in which a user can navigate around, interact with, and be immersed in another environment or world in real time, or "at the speed of life." VR exists parallel to our everyday world. Multisensory experiences are potentially a characteristic of VR, but that is not necessarily true today. Much of VR now is only visual. Some VR developers add an audio component to their work; VR expert Brenda Laurel reports that when audio is added to video in VR the video seems more real and vibrant. Some developers are also working on our senses of smell and touch, but their work is quite preliminary. These senses are much harder to mimic and refresh than the visual and auditory. I don't know of anyone who is trying to build a sense of taste into VR. However, in the future, as the technology progresses, multisensory dimensions may be viewed as necessary for VR. VR's Other Dimensions Within about five years you should be able to run slick, consumer- oriented VR on your desktop computer and advanced VR applications on office workstations; tomorrow's supercomputers should be able to do incredible things to enhance the VR experience. In the longer-term future (10 to 20 years), you should be able to experience advanced VR from the comfort of your home, with much of it coming to you over the Internet or whatever supersedes it. VR should become an integral part of business, substituting virtual trips for "real" travel to attend meetings, create products, or conduct inspections. VR on the Internet has come along slowly. The problem seems not to be the speed of the Internet backbone or its capabilities, but the bandwidth of the last mile to your house. Forget about standard Internet service, DSL, cable, or even faster lines to provide the bandwidth you need. Except for the fastest connections (like OC3) of the Internet2 used by major research universities, they're just not fast enough to handle the data needed to transmit high-quality VR. However, it is anticipated that this problem will be solved in the next few years as fiberoptic cable or other fast transmission media reach our houses and businesses. These obstacles appear to be more economic than technological. VR will also affect communications. Even defining ordinary words becomes a problem as VR mimics the real world. One of my clients started talking about using puppets for a product demonstration. I assumed she was talking about virtual puppets, common in VR. She was actually talking about real, physical puppets. And when you are talking about your office, your files, or your desktop, already you must distinguish between the office that your computer is in and the "office" that is in your computer. VR may create a number of identity crises, says Sherry Turkle, a professor of the sociology of science at MIT. The anonymity of Internet VR makes it easy (and fun for some people) to create different personae. If you're a man, you may want to express your female side; for example, inventor Ray Kurzweil's female persona is "Ramona," a virtual musician and performer. Meet her, hear her story, and see/hear her perform at www.kurzweilai.net. Your VR presence, represented by an avatar, could be totally different from your everyday appearance. VR will allow you to try out and learn different things, virtually, both positive and negative. You can perhaps enrich your life by experiencing different worlds and conducting explorations within them. On the other hand, you could indulge various perversions that may be carried over into real life. We've already seen these potentialities on the Internet. VR will extend that power to incredible levels. Cybersex, escapism into fantasy worlds, and online addictions are all very likely as VR becomes more sophisticated and widespread. VR will greatly extend the capabilities of the Internet and other communication, educational, entertainment, and work-related media. As with any new technology (think of the book, film, telephone, or TV) results can be either positive or negative. Today, you can seek out porno books or films, make an obscene phone call, or watch extreme violence on TV, but you can also enjoy these media for positive and enriching purposes. VR is the same. You choose. Finally, VR use has been growing rapidly. CyberEdge, a research and marketing firm, estimates that VR had a $24 billion market in architecture, engineering, medicine, and other visualization applications in 2000 (contracting to $22 billion in 2001 "under worldwide economic pressure"). Daratech, an engineering technology research firm, estimates that the market for virtual prototyping and simulation in engineering topped $1.3 billion in 2001, a growth of more than 19% from 2000. The following are just a few of the world-changing applications in virtual reality's future. Avatars: Your Proxy In Cyberspace Avatars are electronic images serving as representatives of people in virtual reality. With them, you may appear as yourself, another person, an animal, or almost any entity you choose. Avatars may have the largest impact of any VR application; they will represent us and other people (or entities) in virtual worlds. One present "world provider" on the Internet allows users to choose avatars to represent themselves in its worlds. You may appear as a cat, fish, horse, another animal, or even a range of diverse humans. As you move around your chosen world, you are able to see avatars representing other people and interact with them. Boston-based LifeFX (www.lifefx.com) will allow you to choose an avatar to deliver your e-mail with video and audio rather than text. At this point it isn't e-mail anymore. They call it facemail or Stand-In. At present, they offer you stock, off-the-shelf avatars, but soon they expect to offer customized, personalized avatars. If you send them a videotape of yourself and a voice recording, they will turn them into your very own "talking-head" avatar to use for sending facemail on the Internet. Within several years, expect everyone to use facemail on the Internet when it is more useful than sending text e-mails. Avatars now also serve as hosts on some Web sites. Provided by Boston- based Artificial Life and used by more than 20 companies, these "bots," or virtual robots, combine artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and VR in the form of an attractive avatar (svelte, brunette Christine Eaglestar is one) to answer your questions and solve your problems. Some companies using these artificially intelligent avatars say that customers share more with bots than they do with human customer service representatives or other electronic systems. Avatars can also serve as virtual news anchors, like Ananova (ananova.com) on Internet news shows. Mya, a virtual actress, appears in a Motorola ad. Reportedly the first version of Mya was so real that Motorola's ad agency asked that she appear less real. Expect to see many avatars and bots on the Internet in your future. You'll be able to choose or create an avatar not only to deliver your facemail, but also to represent you in chat rooms (or "chat worlds"). Virtual Communication Beyond sending text e-mail or facemail, VR will allow you to send VR worlds. While text e-mails are good for quick messages and facemail adds a personal touch, it will sometimes be best to convey concepts, ideas, and experiences by sending a world on the Web. Virtual worlds are rich, information-full environments that may take you a good deal of time to create and then distribute. Look for software companies to offer "world processing" software for creating and sending these virtual environments. One site, visualpark.net/protect, is a step toward using a world to convey information rather than a standard Web page. To use the site, you have to click around to get the information you need. According to site creator Bill Coyle, "Older or inexperienced users just don't get it. They expect to be led through the site in a linear fashion. Younger people explore the site as a world and have enlightening fun. During 2002 we will incorporate full VR and have a collection of worlds to explore." The consortium developing Internet2, led by VR pioneer Jaron Lanier, is building a networked VR communication system that will make it possible for users to feel as if they are in the same room as a person across the country or on the other side of the world. Among the many challenges for tele-immersion is to use high bandwidth to project users in 3-D and in real time from at least two, if not three or more, distant locations. The result will be a virtual videoconference that looks and feels more like a real encounter. To create this illusion, they use at least seven cameras, with graphics algorithms to produce a 3-D image of the people you are communicating with on a surround screen. Potential applications include virtual business meetings, training sessions, concurrent engineering reviews, professional consultations, and much more. The costs and complexity of teleimmersion are still stumbling blocks; we'll have to wait about five years to use tele-immersion in our work, and perhaps 10 years or more to use it as consumers. But it's coming and will have a big impact on both work and play. Virtual Design and Engineering Computers have long been embraced as important design tools, as designers and engineers move fluidly from 2-D computer-aided design (CAD) to 3-D CAD and finally to VR. Engineering market researcher Daratech estimated the virtual prototyping and visualization market at $1.3 billion in 2001, but the CAD market at $5.3 billion. VR is the natural progression from CAD, so there's a sizable new market for design and engineering VR. Engineers now use VR on desktop computers, workstations, "work walls," surround screens, and "CAVEs," the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment developed at University of Illinois's Electronic Visualization Laboratory. These virtual environments surround users with 3-D images. General Motors is using VR extensively in the design and review process, mocking up a product on workstations, transferring it to a work wall for initial review, and finally doing a full demo in a CAVE. GM's engineers claim that they can review and modify three designs in the time it used to take to do one, and they discover potential problems before designs are turned into expensive physical prototypes. In the future, it will make no sense not to use VR in every design and engineering process to simulate products before they are made. Proposed designs will be sent around the world on the Internet (or Internet2) for review and modification at different sites before production begins. Overcoming Disabilities VR has already benefited people with disabilities through architectural accessibility studies, assessing wheelchair access, training in wheelchair use, virtual tours of community attractions, and the like. New VR applications are continuously being developed and applied in the disabilities field. VR can help people with disabilities live fuller lives with greater independence. A key concept in this field, developed by former NorthLight Technologies CEO Tom Murphy, is to fill gaps between a person's capabilities and what the environment requires. VR is both a tool to assess these gaps and a way to fill some of them. In the future, it will be standard procedure, if not mandatory, to use VR in testing buildings, homes, and public places for accessibility before plans are approved. Control of home, work, and other environments will be mediated through computers. Using VR interfaces, those with limited mobility will be able to control their environments, opening and closing windows and blinds, controlling appliances and entertainment systems, opening and closing doors, and using lights. VR-enhanced communications will allow those with restricted mobility, confined to their homes, to interact more fully and humanly with the outside world. Because they will use avatars and augmented and assistive technologies on the Internet, they need not reveal to anyone that they have a disability. People with learning disabilities will be able to share their experiences, feelings, and knowledge using communications assistance and augmentation. Education and training can be expedited through VR and connections to the Net. Various kinds of employment will be possible through VR. People with physical disabilities could even work in a factory with augmented and assistive equipment. Entertainment in Virtual Worlds VR's entertainment applications range from advanced video games to movies to whole worlds. Most of what we call video games today are essentially VR games. Their 3- D visualization is usually quite good, and they are immersive (just try to pry my eyes from the screen), interactive (how fast are your fingers?), and in real time (just try to keep up). While using fewer picture elements or polygons (collections of triangles in 3-D space) than powerful VR computers, video games are dedicated enough to their graphics tasks to provide a satisfactory experience. In fact, the graphics processors in your video game player may be more powerful than those in your desktop PC. As the Internet becomes fast enough and has enough VR offerings, expect more and more VR video gaming to be played on the Internet. Movies have yet to become true virtual realities, though they now use all kinds of VR tricks in production, as Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) did: wire-frame designs, layering, digital imaging, motion capture, and collision detection. But Final Fantasy was not interactive and it was not created for the user in real time. At some point, movies will be created that meet our criteria for being VR, perhaps as artistic experiments. These movies will be 3-D, immersive, interactive, and respond to viewers in real time. It will be a real experience as you become part of the movie's action around you and influence plot twists with your actions. You may also interact with the movie in a network of other viewers/actors. You won't just sit back and watch, but act and interact, becoming part of the action yourself. At first this will only be possible in special theaters, but as bandwidth increases, you will either experience the movie over the Internet or download it for later participation. Like VR movies, VR worlds may be offered for live enjoyment on the Internet or downloaded for later exploration. These worlds will offer virtual experiences for entertainment, education, enlightenment, or excitement. Your choices of experience may range from a religious story to pornography and everything in-between. On the Net in VR, you may choose to go out for a night on the town at a popular virtual nightclub world. You will be able to go to historic, sacred, futuristic, and vacation world sites. Some worlds have already been developed in which visitors can help create the environment and live a parallel life there, much like Sim City and other stand-alone software environments. Users develop virtual land and structures while interacting (through their avatars) with other visitors or inhabitants to create a new, virtual social structure. Virtual Medicine Virtual reality already permits surgeons to test procedures and hone their skills with no harm to patients. But VR's future in medicine is much wilder. Researchers could build an entire virtual human that responds accurately to disease, injury, and medication. For a number of years, VR developers have offered simulated organs for medical education and training. Some even offered it for diagnosis, but only for a specific part of the body. Now they are developing a full "Virtual Human" with all of the body's systems interacting and responding to one another. Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory were first approached by the military to produce a virtual human upon which they could test nonlethal weapons. Now working with companies around the world, they hope to make the virtual human a VR reality within the next 10 years. With the virtual human, the researchers envision being able to go into the body and actually see how various organs, individually and in concert, respond to medications or procedures confronting disease or injury. They want to see how a heart medication will affect the liver, pancreas, or other organs. Drug companies are delighted by the prospect of moving to human trials more quickly or skipping them altogether. Surgeons could perform surgery on one part of the body and see how it affects other parts of the body. Eventually, many virtual humans could be developed that differ in age, sex, race, or other factors. In the farther future, each of us could have our own virtual human, making it possible for doctors to individually tailor our medical treatments. Virtual futures One of the dreams of VR theorists and developers has been to create an experience as good and unencumbered as the Holodeck of Star Trek fame. Most advanced VR experiences still require special VR goggles for visualization and a wand for navigation. Meanwhile, there are yet newer, much wilder visions for VR. In 30 years, tiny nanotechnology processors in our brains will produce VR experiences, predicts Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines. These tiny wireless devices will sit next to specific neurotransmitters in our brains, inspiring them to produce direct VR experiences. We'll also be able to transmit these experiences wirelessly to others. But the key issues with VR's future have less to do with technologies than with what real human life is about. If we want a real life that values beauty, decency, honesty, virtue, and vision, would we not want the same for our virtual realities? We need to make our computers do beautiful things, to connect us, and to support loving relationships in all that we do because computers and their use in VR are the future of our culture. RELATED ARTICLE: Six Characteristics of Virtual Reality 1. VR produces a computer-generated experience, 2. in which you can navigate in a world, 3. with a sense of presence in the world, 4. some degree of immersion in that you are drawn into that world, 5. interactivity in that the world can respond in some way to your actions, and 6. that operates in real time. DR Scenarios Scenario 1: Shari's Cyberbutler, "George" [2012] Shari sometimes tried to sneak in on "George." She opened the door quietly, but as soon as she entered the house with her friend Steve, the lights came up slowly and the curtains began to close. The living room CyberDeck displayed a sunlit valley on its surround screen. Soft music played in the background. "Good evening," said George, the smart house's cyberbutler. "I see you have company." "This is my friend Steve from work. He's a SuperReality Integrator," she replied, as if she had to make an introduction and an explanation. "I want to show him my new CyberDeck." "Fine. Then I will retire and leave you two alone," George replied. As Shari led Steve down the hail, lights illuminated their path, then faded as they moved toward the new CyberDeck, which George had already turned on. A space world gleamed on its screen. "George is sounding a little stuffy these days," Shari thought to herself. "I'll have to adjust that." "This young man, Steve, seems amiable," thought George to himself. "I hope things work out for Shari. Perhaps I should order a background check on him." Scenario 2: A Teenager in Cyberspace [2021] Annie ran into her room, frustrated. Her parents had hassled her again. "What a life to be a teen in the 2020s," she thought. She flopped down on the crumpled pillow on her bed, plugged the commjack into her receptor, and switched on her Commdeck. "Take me to the nice place," her mind said. Instantly, she was connected into the Metamatrix, the planetary communications network. The teen meeting place appeared in her consciousness. There were lots of interesting people there, all so beautiful, sexy, and sophisticated--or at least their avatars were. Annie had just bought a beautiful new avatar at the cybermall, with perfect features and perfect clothes in colors she'd never seen before. Annie knew her avatar would make a spectacular impression on her friends. Her mom and dad wouldn't understand, her mind was fuming now. They weren't even wired into the Metamatrix. In fact, they didn't know she had the implanted connection to the Metamatrix. And she wasn't going to tell them, either. Now the Metamatrix experience had begun to wrap around her. Thoughts of her parents faded. Sound and music enveloped her. Lights danced in her brain. Kevin appeared before her and began to dance at a frenzied pace. He looked beautiful, handsome, strong. His avatar was just right, and she wondered where he got it. She danced feverishly to keep up with his pace, though her effort was only in her brain. They had a wonderful time and agreed to meet in the same world-space next week. After a few hours of revelry, Annie was exhausted. It was all she could do to remove her receptor and switch off the Commdeck. She fell into a deep sleep, forgetting all about the troubles with her parents. She had been more than out on the town. Virtual Reality Data Box Virtual reality market, 2001: $22 billion VR organizations worldwide: 8,512 Average cost of VR system: $92,000 Top VR applications: museums and exhibitions, design evaluations, virtual prototyping Source: CyberEdge Information Services Inc, www.cyberedge.com. Virtual Vocabulary AI, artificial intelligence: computer programs that attempt to emulate human intelligence. Avatar: a digital "actor" or stand-in representing a user in the virtual world. Bot (robot): a computer program, such as a search engine, that automates mundane tasks. Operates even if the owner is not online. CAVE: the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment, developed at the University of Illinois's Electronic Visualization Laboratory. A room-sized visualization and projection system using 3-D graphics to create the illusion of being su3rrounded in a virtual environment. Cyberspace: the digital world constructed by computer networks. DataGlove: device developed by VPL Research Inc., a glove with sensors that transmit information to a computer in order to track what the hand is doing. Facemail: Brand name for a program using avatars to deliver talking e- mail messages, developed by LifeFX. An advantage of facemail over text e-mail is that the avatar can use realistic facial expressions instead of emoticons to provide an emotional context to a message. MUD (Multi-User Dungeon or Dimension): an interactive, simulated environment built collectively by and for multiple users. QuickTime VR: software for adding virtual-reality experiences to a desktop PC with no special equipment. Viewers can use a mouse or keyboard to rotate objects, zoom in or out of a scene, look around 360 degrees, and navigate from one scene to another. Tele-immersion: a combination of virtual reality and networking technologies enabling users in different locations to collaborate in real time in a shared, simulated environment as if they were in the same room. Virtual reality (VR): computer-generated simulation of a real environment or experience. Also called visual simulation (VizSim), virtual environment, artificial reality, synthetic environment. Sources: NetLingo.com; LifeFX.com; Fakespacesystems.com; Internet2.edu; Cyberedge.com. About the Author John C. Briggs is CEO of Activation, an affiliate of visualpark.net. He is the former chief process officer of NorthLight Technologies, a virtual-reality service company, and the former communication director of the Western New York Futurists, a chapter of the World Future Society. He lives in Jackson, Michigan. His last article for THE FUTURIST was "The Promise of Virtual Reality" (September-October 1996). COPYRIGHT 2002 World Future Society Albert "Skip" Rizzo, Ph.D. Director, Virtual Environments Laboratory Integrated Media Systems Center and School of Gerontology University of Southern California, 3715 McClintock Ave. MC-0191 Los Angeles, CA. 90089-0191 email: arizzo@usc.edu phone: 213-740-9819 fax: 213-740-8241 IMSC: A National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center at USC http://imsc.usc.edu Fourth International Conference on Disability, Virtual Reality & Associated Technologies (ICDVRAT 2002), Veszprem, Hungary, September 19-21, 2002, Go to: www.cyber.rdg.ac.uk/icdvrat IEEE VR2003, Los Angeles, March 22-26th, 2003 Go to: WWW.VR2003.ORG VRPSYCH: JOIN THE VIRTUAL REALITY MENTAL HEALTH EMAIL LIST SERVER---410 PROFESSIONALS (SO FAR) WORLDWIDE SHARING IDEAS, DATA, AND THE LATEST INFORMATION. RETURN THIS EMAIL WITH YOUR REQUEST TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS USEFUL FORUM. Check out http://graphics.usc.edu/vret for our new website focusing specifically on 360 Degree Panoramic Video VR applications for anxiety disorders... "You can't discover distant lands unless you are willing to lose sight of the shore ...." Quote stolen from Kim Kerns' signature line. "Understanding is a 3-edged sword!" Vorlon Proverb |
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