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Artificial Reality In Use






Artificial-reality systems allow computer users to experience another world, the world on the other side of a computer screen. By wearing a head-mounted display called an Eye Phone and a black Lycra Data Glove one enters into a three-dimensional ‘virtual reality’ that can be touched and moved around with a wave of the hand. Some advanced artificial-reality systems allow two people to share virtual reality. For example, one participant can play Alice and the other the Mad Hatter in a computerized reenactment of the tea party from ‘Alice in Wonderland’. A participant can lift objects by means of a Data Glove.

The NASA bureaucracy is reported to have been confused at first about the usefulness of the Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW), the official name for its artificial-reality system. Originally it was seen as just a way to display operational data, essentially a virtual instrument panel. Notes Robinett, now a project manager for artificial-reality research at the University of North Carolina: ” The real application for the VIEW system had to be telepresence – artificial presence in hazardous environments like space. With the head-mounted display hooked up to remote cameras, you’ve got what we call “telerobotics”. For a lot of users, it’s safer than being there. You can assemble a space station without risking astronauts’ lives.”

With video-camera input or computer generated graphics, telerobotics could also be useful at the bottom of the ocean or in handling nuclear materials. Microtelepresence, a variation using optical or computer-aided magnification, would allow the manipulation of materials at a microscopic or even molecular level.. This technology should not be confused with computer-generated simulations of molecules, an area that was pioneered at the University of North Carolina and is now being tested for the modeling and synthesis of drugs.

At NASA Ames, Fisher and colleagues McGreevy, Humphries, and Dr. Beth Wenzel are now perfecting the next-generation VIEW system. When completed, the system will show stereoscopic images in color or high-resolution black and white that are generated by computer, supplied by video cameras, or replayed from videodiscs. The updated VIEW system will also incorporate 3-D sound positioning and speech recognition and synthesis.

To see the hottest advances in artificial reality, you once had to be privy to government, university, and private research labs but on June 7, 1989, computerized environments went public.

Two firms commercializing the technology held demonstrations in San Francisco and Anaheim. VPL Research proclaimed the occasion a holiday, Virtual Reality Day. Declared its press release: ”Like Columbus Day, VR Day will be celebrated every year with a parade and virtual beauty contest inside Virtual Reality.”

Despite such whimsy, big business – as represented by Pacific Bell – is taking artificial reality seriously. In San Francisco’s Brooks Hall, at the regional-telephone-company-sponsored Texpo’89 exhibit of telecommunications products, a place of honor is reserved for VPL Research’s demonstration amid the applications that will be possible once broadband fiber-optic phone lines connect offices and homes. On display is the world’s first shared virtual reality. Side-by-side color monitors suspended above eye level show two views of a colorful computer-generated child-day-care center, as seen from the points of view of two participants seated below the screens, each wearing 3-D goggles and a Data Glove.

Transmitting image data over fiber-optic cable, users in separate cities could manipulate the same computer-mediated environment – a welcome development for an architect and client, say, with offices in different parts of the country For Pacific Bell, shared virtual reality carries the allure of profits from the use of its extensive fiber-optic-cable networks.

To enter this world of virtual reality, you put on a VPL Data Glove and a VPL-manufactured head-mounted color display called an Eye Phone. You can see the day-care center’s interior, in three dimensions, complete with doors, windows, furnishings, and a mannequin representing your colleague. Look down to see your own effigy and a disembodied hand floating nearby. To move yourself around, flex your index and middle fingers and then simply “let your fingers do the walking.”

If you want to change the placement of the water fountain, reach out to it and make a fist; grasp and move it, then flatten your hand to release it. This kind of tactile interaction is one way artificial reality differs from computer simulations of the past. Experience the day-care center from a six-year-old eye level; to get short, point down with your little finger. To get big again, point up.

Presiding over the demonstration is Jaron Lanier, founder of VPL Research, and originator of VR Day. He is introducing the first commercial shared virtual reality, RB2, which stands for Reality Built for Two. According to Lanier, “the essence of virtual reality is that it’s shared.”

Even with sophisticated graphics workstations powering RB2, its synthetic environments are hardly detailed enough to be confused with the real world. And Lanier’s ‘ first new level of objectively shared reality available to humanity since the physical world ‘ has other drawbacks; by the end of the first day’s showings, one of the system demonstrators is experiencing motion sickness and has to take Dramamine before the next day’s session. Such ‘simulator sickness’ is common in flight training, where the body reacts to conflicting sensory cues from simulation and reality.

 

Ответьте на вопросы к тексту:

1. What makes a welcome development for an architect and a client with offices in different parts of the country?

2. Who is the founder of the VPL Research?

3. How is Virtual Reality Day celebrated?

4. What is an Eye Phone?

5. Why does one of the RB2 system demonstrators have to take Dramamine before the next day’s session?

6. What is the essence of virtual reality, according to Lanier?

7. What must one do to enter the world of virtual reality?






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