TVR 3101
VIRTUAL REALITY
TOPIC: APPLICATION OF VIRTUAL REALITY
By
ADIBAH BINTI MOHD NAJIB 98100466
ENDANG ELLYANA ISKANDAR 98100745
NOOR ADINAH OMAR 98100371
NORAIN DALILAH BINTI MOHD RASHID 98100444 KARTIKA MURNI BINTI ABDUL MAJID 98100424
SHAM AZURA AHMAD 98100453
FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
MULTIMEDIA UNIVERSITY
Virtual Reality For Entertainment
When we say entertainment, we are not referring to video games only. There are many virtual reality applications on entertainment. Some of them are:
- Virtual Theme Park
There are 9 virtual theme parks that exist in this world. One of them is The "Tamago Teikoku", located at Namco Wonder Egg, Tokyo. It is the most equipped theme park because it has 40 VR units, compared to the other 8 theme parks. It has 3 platforms modelled by Galaxian 3 and Hornet 1 Flight Simulator. It was founded on 1992. The Galaxian 3 model is a large-scale, motion-based and interactive 360-degree surround "theater". It has Semi-interactive game with 6 players shooting at targets moving on top of a prerender computer generated background.
The Pleasure Island is located at Orlando, Florida. The size of the centre is 800sf and it was available for public since November 1993. This park is sort of a VR test bed to evaluate VR technology. It has 3 VR units with 3 platforms that are modelled by CyberTron, Virtual Glider and Black Mariah.For example, the CyberTron, is based on a human size Gyroscope (anti gravity full body motion system) and a Silicon Graphic Computer. The motion platform units can be networked so that one player can "see" and interact with the other(s) in the Virtual World. A maximum of 4 units may be networked.
DisneyQuest in Orlando, Florida is a family entertainment place with 10,000m² facilities. However this place is still under construction, not all of the facilities are available for public. The facility will have four different zones that make extensive use of VR techniques in different contexts.
- LBE (Location Based Entertainment)
There are about 40 LBE exist world widely. One of them that are equipped with the highest VR units is Virtual World Entertainment (VWE), Las Vegas. It has one platform that uses VR POD 2.5 and 3.0 models. POD is like a booth usually available in shopping mall game arcade. Sometimes it is shape like a cockpit with joystick and visual screen for the user to interact. The software used at VWE is BattleMech. There are two screens, mounted one above the other. The top screen is about 19" and is the main display screen, which displays the "world" as seen right out the front of the BattleMech.
- VR Café / Bar
CyberMind's Virtua Cafe, Miami Beach is a type of café that has VR facilities. It uses 2 platforms with 1000CS and Virtual Odyssey models. These models are stand-alone POD.
- VR Bar / Restaurant / Club
A new style to attract people is by using VR technology in the restaurant. One example is this entertainment type is MARS Restaurant and Club, Vancouver. This café provides 2 VR units that are equipped with 2000SU model. You can have your dinner and also VR experience at the same time; of course the meals and beverage are not virtual.
- VR Internet Café
One example of this entertainment type is Cybersmith, Cambridge that provides 1 VR units. It uses 2000SU model that is a stand-alone POD type. Cybersmith have possibly over 40 computer workstations of various kinds. In addition to WWW access, they have CD-ROMs, Sega, Nintendo Atari and 3DO games, Virtual Reality simulators and Face Morphing. The coffee is meant to be decent as well.
- Virtual Museum
The recognized VR museum in the world is The Virtual Brewery, located in Tokyo, equipped with 12 VR units. Basically, the idea is to bring people through the history of Sapporo and the art of beer brewing. The virtual tour starts in front of the old Sapporo factory, and then the user is drawn inside and taken through the processes of brewing, fermentation, filtration and bottling. The whole experience lasts about 5 minutes and it attracted more than 70,000 people during its first three weeks of operation.
- VR Retail Shop
This is another alternative of marketing and selling techniques whereby user can shop virtually. They can view and experience the sample product before they can buy it. One example of the shop is Jurassic Park store located in Santa Monica. The concept is the standing user can view all the retails using specific devices.
- Sports Simulation
The MagBall is a basketball simulator. The game is like the real game, with cheering crowd, opponent players, scoreboard and virtual coach. Other sports simulation are Cyber Pong, Virtual Dart, Black Serve, Virtual Tennis, Virtual Hoops and etc.
- Flying Simulation
The Bandit Cockpit is a POD based, with window on the world. The player will be in standing position and controls Rudder pedals, H-F-18 Hornet, M -Mig 29, E-F-15 Eagle. However, it is also compatible with computer such as PC Compatible and Tellurian IG. There is another simulation called The Flight Simulation, manufactured by Air Combat School. The difference is just that Flight Simulation has projector as the display.
- Game Arcade
Many game arcades have embedded VR technology in their place. For example, the Trocadero Center, London with 10 VR units. The software used is Project Dragoon, a type of Shoot-em-up game. Players will sit in a theatre and control the joystick. Another game is Mercury. Player will sit in motorcycle position that has Dual differential twist grip controls for the rider, complete with fire switch, speed toggle control and auxiliary button.
Prepared by Adibah Mohd Najib (98100466) and Sham Azura Ahmad (98100453)
Virtual Reality For Education
There have been specific proposals for ways of using VR, including: visiting inaccessible places or historical scenes (Newby, 1993); manipulating simulations of the real world, without the danger, expense or time consumption of doing the real thing (Pantelidis, 1993); exploring places and things more effectively because of alterations in scale and time (Stuart & Thomas, 1991); and, learning algebra in a virtual world where the behaviour of objects demonstrate the axioms of algebra (Winn & Bricken, 1992).
In simple words it is certain that using virtual reality (VR) to enhance the learning process have becoming the recent idea in the education. Now it seems that the interest of embedding in schools, colleges and universities are growing rapidly. This is based on the increasing numbers of teachers in the U.S.A., Europe and elsewhere are embracing this new medium and exploring ways of using it to enhance learning in schools.
Underlying such proposals for using VR in education is a number of assumptions about its benefits that are either unique to VR, or less evident in other media. Three assumptions in particular are prominent, and they focus on VR's positive impacts on spatial thinking, interest level, and individual learning. If these assumptions are warranted, VR will be a powerful tool, which deserves prominent coverage in teacher training. As we can see today VR are use to create an environment almost similar to the classroom, laboratory and library.
In not-too-distant future VR has such strong potential for classrooms, that it will inevitably become a common tool. A typical virtual classroom usually is a password protected, web-based virtual classroom system that includes a variety of discussion groups, live chat, areas for the teacher to post the syllabus and other handouts and notices, a module for organizing online assignments, a grades module, and a unique, web-based email system open only to students in the class.
Its growing popularity in entertainment, and expansion on the World Wide Web, coupled with the increase in home access to computer networks, indicates that students will soon be much more familiar with VR than their teachers. Most students find working with VR is fun. It is certain VR's unique character offers very interesting possibilities for school students.
The simplest way that students could use VR for learning is to explore scenes that someone has created. For example, a picture that shows a 15th century English farmhouse. Students can easily learn how to use the mouse to go round to the front door and enter the house. They can then explore the inside freely, examining the furniture, going upstairs and so on.
Virtual library is a large repository of data that contains information or links to other websites that will lead to certain information. It is also known as World Wide Web virtual library. It may also functions as a search engine. Some of the virtual library displays a table of content where the viewer can browse in all the topics and choose whichever topic they like. It is like going to the library and search for a book, which we want to look for, but by implementing VR it is even better. Using the keyword all the required link that discuss on the topics will be given. The user just has to choose one URL adress and click on it.
WWW Virtual Library - Archaeology hosted by the Archaeological Research Institute at Arizona State University is one of an example of a virtual library. Accessing it is like going to a museum, except that this is a virtual museum. We can access archeological information from the region all over the world. We can choose to view our subject areas such as archeometry, botanical, education materials etc; schools, journals, and news. A search engine is also provided. Apart form English, we also can view the materials in six other different languages that are Catalan, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
Virtual lab is another area that uses VR environment. With Internet access, it is now possible to offer students "virtual laboratories" via the WWW or CD-ROM. Experiment-oriented problems can be offered without the overhead incurred when maintaining a full laboratory. The objective of the course and the virtual laboratory is to introduce students to experimentation, problem solving, data gathering, and scientific interpretation early in their careers.
One example of the virtual lab is the one that have been produced at Buffalo's Virtual Reality Laboratory. The students and faculty here are pioneering the use of VR technology in areas such as surgery, remote robotic control, volcanic simulation and factory design. The faculty involved in our projects pool their expertise from fields as diverse as mathematics, geology, mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering and medical sciences. The tools welded by our talented teams include head-mounted displays, magnetic proximity sensors, instrumented gloves, driving simulators, SGI Onyx2 and Indigo computers. With their unique experience, industry partners and computational resources, the lab is answering the technological challenges of today with VR solutions.
As we can see it is concluded that, by using VR in education is a good step in approaching more interesting and fun way in learning. The way of learning is not dull anymore and more interactive, convinient and flexible.
Prepared by Kartika Murni Binti Abdul Majid (98100424) and Norain Dalilah Binti Abdul Rashid (98100444)
Virtual Reality For Military
For years, virtual reality was considered the ultimate in entertainment. This technology empowered people who would now be able to "move" in a video game not just from one side of the screen to the other, but they would be able to look all around in a new and fascinating virtual environment.
Over the years, virtual reality has broken through the entertainment realm into the commercial sector and is currently used in areas once thought impossible. Presently, virtual reality is used in the medical field, the science field and even the manufacturing industry.
The automobile industry as well as the military have reaped the benefits of virtual reality and have begun using it to create virtual environments that are more cost efficient, more practical and just as easy to use or easier, than their physical counterparts. In the military training and operations, applications of virtual reality are divided into three categories. They are simulation of reality, extension of human senses through telepresence, and as an information enhancer through augmented reality.
i) As military simulations
One of the earliest uses of simulators in a military environment was the flight trainer, which was built, in the late 1920’s and 1930’s. These trainers looked like sawed-off coffins mounted on a pedestal, and were used to teach instrument flying. The sensation produced are quite similar like flying the instruments at night whereby the virtual environment would provide darkness inside the trainer cockpit, realistic readings on the instrument panel and motion of the trainer on the pedestal.
To move beyond the instrument flying domain, simulator designers needed a way to produce a view of the outside world. When television and video cameras became available in 1950’s, simulator designers used the video camera as if it were flying over a scale model of the terrain around an airport. The resulting image was sent to a television monitor placed in front of the pilot in the simulator. The pilot could control the movement of the camera over the terrain board by moving the control stick and throttle. As a result, the pilot could receive visual feedback both inside and outside the cockpit.
The logical extension of the video camera/television monitor approach was to use multiple monitors to simulate the entire field of view from the airplane cockpit. This method is still in use for transport aircraft simulators, where the field of view needs to be only about 180 degrees horizontally and 60 degrees vertically. For fighter aircraft simulators, the field of view must be at least 180 degrees horizontally and vertically. For these applications, the simulator consists of a cockpit placed at the center of a domed room, and the virtual images are projected onto the inside surface of the dome. These types of simulators have proven to be very effective training aids by themselves, and the newest innovation is a project called SIMNET to electronically connect two or more simulators to produce a distributed simulation environment. [McCarty, 1993] Distributed simulations can be used not only for training, but also to develop and test new combat strategy and tactics. A major development in this area is an IEEE data protocol standard for distributed interactive simulations. [IEEE, 1993] This standard allows the distributed simulation to include not only aircraft, but also land-based vehicles and ships. Another recent development is the use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) to decrease the cost of wide field of view simulations. [McCarty, 1993]
ii) Telepresence for military missions
Two rather obvious reasons have driven the military to explore and utilize telepresence in their operations, which are to reduce exposure to hazards and to increase stealth.
Many aspects of combat operations are very hazardous, and they become even more risky if the combatant seeks to improve his performance. Main examples of this principle are firing weapons and performing reconnaissance. To perform either of these tasks well takes time, and this is usually time when the combatant is exposed to hostile fire. Smart weapons and remotely- piloted vehicles (RPVs) were developed to address this problem.
Some smart weapons are autonomous and self-directed, while others are remotely controlled after they are launched. This allows the shooter and weapon controller to launch the weapon and immediately seek cover, thus decreasing his exposure to return fire. In the case of RPVs, the person who controls the vehicle not only has the advantage of being in a safer place, but the RPV can be made smaller than a vehicle that would carry a man, thus making it more difficult for the enemy to detect.
iii) Military information enhancement
In a dynamic combat environment, it is imperative to supply the pilot or tank commander with as much of the necessary information as possible while reducing the amount of distracting information. This goal led the Air Force to develop the head-up display (HUD), which optically combines critical information (altitude, airspeed, heading) with an unobstructed view through the forward windscreen of a fighter aircraft. With the HUD, the pilot never has to look down at his instruments. When the HUD is coupled with the aircraft's radar and other sensors, a synthetic image of an enemy aircraft can be displayed on the HUD to show the pilot where that aircraft is, even though the pilot may not be able to see the actual aircraft with his unaided eyes. This combination of real and virtual views of the outside world can be extended to nighttime operations. Using an infrared camera mounted in the nose of the aircraft, an enhanced view of the terrain ahead of the aircraft can be projected on the HUD. The effect is for the pilot to have a 'daylight' window through which he has both a real and an enhanced view of the nighttime terrain and sky.
In some cases, the pilot may need to focus totally on the virtual information and completely exclude the actual view. Work in this area has been pioneered by Thomas Furness III and others at Wright Laboratories, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. This work, dubbed the Super Cockpit, involved not only a virtual view of the outside world, but also of the cockpit itself, where the pilot would select and manipulate virtual controls using hand gestures. [Furness, 1986]
Prepared by Endang Ellyana Iskandar (98100745) and Noor Adinah Omar (98100371).