Virtual reality

Task 1

Start-up

Virtual reality is still seen as a toy by most people. Can you think of any potential applications of VR other than in computer games? Make a list.

Reading

Task 2 El Read the text opposite. Note down any applications that are n< •'■ ii 'our list.

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Fancy a fantasy spaceflight?

Make a wish and you can go anywhere. That is the reality for a new computer invention, Chris Partridge says.

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Computers are about to take people to places they have never been able to visit before, 45 including the surface of other planets. Such a trip will be an il­lusion, but one that comes closer to real life than anything on stage or screen. Artificial worlds 50 are being built up in a computer memory so that people can walk through at will, look around, and even touch objects.

The system is called virtual 55 reality, so called from the math­ematical concept of an image that has the virtues of a real object without the substance.

Virtual reality systems are 60 being developed throughout the world for a range of uses includ­ ing enabling people to walk 'inside' nuclear power stations, while controlling a robot that ac- 65 tually goes into an area in which no human could live, and con­ ducting architects through a computer-generated building before it is constructed. 70

British scientists have a world lead in virtual reality, despite the fortunes being poured into research by Japanese and Amer­ican companies, which see it as a 75 technology for the next century.

In Britain, Robert Stone, of the National Advanced Robotics Research Centre at Manchester University, is developing sys- 80 terns that could put men on Mars without shooting them into space and could plunge divers under the North Sea without tak-

ing them out of the office.

The problem with guiding a robot by looking at a picture from a video camera mounted on it and twiddling the controls is that it is not a natural system, Mr Stone says. The operator spends all his time controlling the robot and none solving the problem. The time lag between seeing the image and sending a corrective control signal is another difficulty.

A virtual reality system con­sists of a helmet with a colour display in front of each eye, and wide-angle lenses to cover the entire field of view and give a stereoscopic effect. The helmet contains sensors, rather like electronic compasses, to record where it is pointing. A computer calculates what the wearer should be seeing in that direc­tion and displays it on the screen.

In more advanced systems, the operator wears an electronic glove that detects exactly what the fingers are doing and trans­mits the information to the com­puter. If the user tries to pick up something, the computer will make the object follow the hand to give the illusion of carrying it.

Pads in the latest type of gloves press into the insides of the fin­gers and palm when an object is encountered, to create the il­lusion of feeling it. Complete 'exoskeletons' covering the user and allowing the computer to

85 simulate almost anything poss­ible in real life are still in the lab­oratory.

A fire-fighter in a nuclear pow­er plant, for example, would

90 move through a computer model wearing an exoskeleton, while a robot would move through the real thing. The computer pro­gram will be derived from the

95 data used to design the plant in the first place.

Mr Stone has developed a data glove with air pockets that are inflated to give a sensation of

ioo touch in collaboration with Air-muscle, the supplier of the pneu­matic systems that made the Spitting Image puppets really spit.

105 The biggest initial market is likely to be for a new generation of video games. W Industries, of Leicester, recently launched a virtual reality system for video

HO arcades. The system, called Vir-tuality, consists of a cockpit in which a player sits, wearing the helmet, at a set of controls that can mimic a bobsleigh, a space-

115 ship or whatever the imagina­tion of the games programmer can devise.

The helmet has a pair of liquid-crystal displays with wide-angle

120 lenses giving a stereoscopic im­age, and a set of magnetic sen­sors to tell the computer what the helmet is looking at as it moves.

125 The first game is a fighter simulation. Another is based on a sequence in the film, Return of the Jedi, in which flying motor­cycles race through a forest. The

130 computer can link and control several helmets at once for a group game. ■•■(■■- * ■ •