Past Product: VR Research Web

PI: Carrie Heeter
Graphics: Pericles Gomes

The VR Research Web is a CD-ROM collecting a series of virtual reality research studies conducted by Carrie Heeter. It was created in 1992, prior to the maturation of the World Wide Web as a communication medium. Thus, it has nothing to do with the Internet, despite the name.

Eventually I will post the studies, surveys, and video clips included on the VR Research Web CD-ROM on this page. Here's a beginning, Once Upon A 3D Time.

Once Upon a 3-D Time...
(3-D Second Person Virtual Reality)

About the Cyberarts Installation:

This Interactive Installation combines ENTER™ 3-D stereoscopic video laserdisc and codec technology with Mandala second person Virtual Reality on an Amiga computer and a Macintosh for additional sound and video processing. The live, chromakeyed participant (you) becomes part of a 3-D stereoscopic motion video environment (the virtual world). You experience a curious, compelling transformation which places you inside 3-D photorealistic interactive space on a life-sized screen. This integration of interaction with graphical objects and interaction with stereoscopic 3-D motion video creates out of body experiences which are strikingly real. Initial research by Michigan State University shows that participants feel as if they are entering a different world. People report an overwhelming desire to interact.

In this installation, we experiment with second person VR interfaces. Instructions are given in the form of a story naration, as if describing something that happened in the past (e.g.: when the sorcerer touched the ball, the scene would change...). We use a silhouette body as cue to where to stand. Instead of “clicking on” objects, you stand on them. Initially, the silhouette is generic, until you select an identity (sorcerer or inventor). We try several modalities to try to let you actually interact with video. The crystal ball and the 3-D motion viewmaster are interfaces where it is natural to be able to touch them and change scenes. In both cases, you manipulate a portal to the video world, interacting by controlling the video rather than being immersed in it. As the story progresses, you enter one of the video worlds. With different motivations (selecting ingredients for a magic potion and testing molecules for a medical cure), the sorcerer and inventor make choices about objects in the video world will be brought into the graphic world and become part of the story.

Even though the story stops at “THE END,” this is only the beginning of our work with second person VR interfaces.

About the Artists:

Carrie Heeter (Director, Michigan State University Comm Tech Lab), Michael Miller (Chairman, ENTER Corporation), and Pericles Gomes (Senior Designer, Michigan State University Comm Tech Lab) developed this interactive installation. Heeter programmed the interation, Miller produced the 3-D video and Gomes designed the Amiga graphics. All three artists contributed to conceptualization. The installation is part of an ongoing program of research and development into new ways of using second person VR for education and entertainment.

Artists: Carrie Heeter, Michael Miller and Pericles Gomes

Hardware: Amiga Computer, Pioneer LaserDisc, cameras and chromakey switcher, lights, ENTER™ custom 3-D technology, Macintosh IIci.
Software: Mandala, HyperCard, SoundEdit, DeluxePaint III

AWARDS:

-- exhibited at SIGGRAPH, 1993