Getting In Touch With Virtual Nature -- Emerging Virtual-Reality Technology May Let People Experience The Environment Without Endangering It

Safeguard your habitat - take a VR nature walk.

Don't be shy. Hike through Yosemite Valley's once-trampled meadowland. Jump ship at the Galapagos Islands and see what Darwin saw before dilettante naturalists waded ashore and upset that fragile ecosystem. Run your fingers along the prehistoric cave drawings in France at Lascaux, off-limits to everyone but you.

Don't worry about where you tread or what you touch.

Thanks to the latest in virtual-reality applications being developed in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, you're "experiencing" the environment without endangering it. You're donning HMD (head-mounted display) and immersing yourself in a three-dimensional replication - with interactive ambient sound - of a rain forest or a famous historic site, places once threatened by tourists and developers.

In its more basic form, VR has been used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for flight training, by architects for 3-D floor plans and by kids for the ultimate in arcade thrills. Now, however, the computer-generated environment - or virtual reality - is entering a new phase, where our natural resources and man-made wonders are observed and preserved.

A more practical use

VR in the 21st century, according to experts here and abroad, will pass from sexy novelty to practical tool for naturalists and museum conservators. And, at a price comparable to what you're now paying for a low-end PC ($2,500), amateur explorers will be able to immerse themselves in an interactive "National Geographic" special.

All without leaving the home workstation, which will come with virtual-glasses, portable projection display and 20 gigabytes of RAM.

"You know what my dream application is?" says Linda Jacobson of Silicon Graphics Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. "I visualize a rain forest in Brazil . . . walking through it . . . soaring above it. You'll be able to experience the site in 360 degrees - climb trees, touch things, hear the forest."

Jacobson, self-described VR "evangelist" and author of "Garage Virtual Reality," predicts VR will be an integral part of the home entertainment system in two to five years. Josh Larson-Mogal, advanced-systems strategist for Silicon Graphics, is more conservative, saying it's a decade away - "provided we lick the problems with nausea and eye strain."

"Pay-to-play" VR is now the hot item at entertainment centers such as Disneyland. More sophisticated 3-D habitats are available on a limited basis at seminars and as touring museum exhibits.

Silicon Graphics recently opened its Visionarium - with 160-degree wrap-around screen and THX sound. It's used primarily to demonstrate interactive VR to educators, media representatives and prospective clients.

From Mars to Stonehenge

But more is on the way, including VR tours of everything from Ohio's Indian burial mounds (a University of Cincinnati project) to the angry red planet ("Robotix Mars Mission" by Carnegie Mellon's SIMLAB). Now touring museums are available for private demonstrations at Visionarium and other high-tech theaters:

-- "Nefertari: Light of Egypt" (by Italy's Infobyte and driven by SGI Onyx supercomputers), which contrasts the tomb in all its glory with today's much-deteriorated vault.

-- "VR Lascaux" (designed by computer artist Benjamin Britton, who combines HMDs and images projected on walls). The cave drawings in southern France have been closed to the public since 1963 because of the harmful effects of bacteria and condensation. "VR Lascaux," completed in '95, stops in November at the 50th International Council of Museums in Buenos Aires.

-- "Virtual Stonehenge," which restores the prehistoric megaliths to their original look, will be shown at London's Virtual Heritage Conference (Dec. 12-13) before becoming a permanent display at the Salisbury Plain site. It is a collaboration of English Heritage and Intel Corp. and uses VR software by Sense8 in Mill Valley, Calif.

-- A frolic mid-ocean with an interactive VR dolphin, which responds to 16 different commands. The project, still a work-in-progress, was begun in '94 by Hitachi Ltd. of Japan.

-- Perhaps most intriguing from an ecological standpoint, a VR digital-terrain model of Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks Studio, demonstrating how the 100-acre facility (about to begin construction near Los Angeles International Airport) can coexist with the adjacent Ballona Wetlands nature preserve.

"3-D graphics exist today on the World Wide Web," points out Jacobson. "That gives us a glimpse of what's to come. You'll be able to view endangered or hard-to-reach environments, navigate through them freely, not just with windows and dialogue boxes."

Copying nature isn't cheap

Virtual environments begin with pictures captured on film or video. These images are digitized, layered over a 3-D computer mock-up of a building or terrain, and, for stunning resolution, projected at 60 frames per second (in contrast to the typical movie's 24 frames per second). Lighting, sound and shadows add further texture, and then VR software (data glove, etc.) is thrown into the mix to create an interactive walk-through or full-sensory ("immersive") experience.

Environmental VRs are creating all sorts of headaches for programmers. Their complexity of detail - or "high-frequency data" - demand much larger databases than symmetrical historic recreations, like Infobyte's virtual Colosseum. Translation: nature costs more to copy than anything man-made.

"To do a compelling VR environment today is quite expensive," says SGI's Larson-Mogal. "It's still not clear where the funding is going to come from to support these ventures."

VR projects so far have been financed through a variety of sources, including government investments and grants and private donations.

No match for the real thing?

Another problem: Even the most ardent fans of VR worry that simulated hikes, no matter how sharp the image, will always pale beside the real thing.

Michigan State University entomologist Dr. Larry Besaw provided research and narration for a virtual nature walk through Hawaii ("Hands On Hawaii") - and he has misgivings.

"As good as virtual reality is right now," says Besaw, "it can't replicate the smell of white ginger blossoms or the feel of a warm tropical breeze on your face."

It's no coincidence that Japan and England - island nations with limited natural resources - are heavily involved in VR research.

"Whether VR is a good or bad thing is immaterial," argues Jane Veeder, who teaches 3-D computer animation at San Francisco State University. "The fact is we're blowing it, the physical world is going away."

Often typed as antagonists, the environmentalist and the high-tech guru are discovering common ground in the nascent world of VR. While their motives differ - and the naturalist balks at the idea of swapping fresh air for cyberspace - both camps agree that the benefits to a blighted, overpopulated planet could be significant.

"What we're talking about is a tool to help solve some of the problems we've created here on Earth," says Britton, an assistant professor at University of Cincinnati now at work on VR lunar landing to coincide with the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Groups like the Wilderness Society and Sierra Club are beginning to think about how cyberspace will benefit their cause. Still, they like what they hear, at least in theory.

"We want kids playing in the dirt, not playing on computer screens or plugging into VR," says Chris Hatch of Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco. "But cyberculture is here to stay: Better it be used to defend the environment."

Virtual reality as learning tool

Brian Winn, assistant director of Michigan State University's Communications Technology Lab, foresees a time when there will be VR toxic spills and wild-life disasters to show "how the environment will change, and to work out laws to stem such crises."

And, in the not-too-distant future elementary children will venture into the core of nuclear reactors. "We'll be going into places that are not only endangered, but are dangerous," predicts Larson-Mogal.

Still in the formative years of VR research, the folks at SIMLAB at Carnegie Mellon believe the sky's the limit.

SIMLAB's research director Carl Eugene Loeffler, now preparing a $2 million interactive search for life on the red plant called "Robotix Mars Mission," says:

"We're (SIMLAB) definitely interested in a number of ecological and animal-based simulations, but it's premature to talk about them. Let's just say that high tech and the environment - once mutually exclusive - will come together in a big way in the 21st century."