Extracts from the Workshop Input Papers - 2

Support and Infrastructure Needs

If new IT developments such as Virtual Reality Environments are to be effectively utilised on campus, then there will need to be co-operation between the developers, the campus computer service providers and academics within departments. The role of the computer service providers must be to provide a bridge between the developers and the academics, to provide the relevant computing infra-structure on campus and to promote the potential and capabilities of virtual reality environments.

To achieve the above roles the service providers need to be informed in good time! To implement any new IT development two things are needed. One is some (often modest) investment, and the other is time. This is needed to explain the new ideas to Centre staff and allow them to become comfortable with the concepts, to develop the facilities and infra-structure to support the development, and to begin to demonstrate on campus the system in action.

There is a considerable amount of information needed by Centres to achieve the role outlined above, and Bob suggested, one of the outcomes of this workshop should be a synopsis sent to Centres which provides this information. At least the information shown below is needed:

1. Time scales of development
   • When will a demonstration system be available?
   • When will a robust system be available?
2. The economics of VR
   • What are the costs of a system?
   • How do such systems scale with numbers of students?
   • What is the economic comparison with alternative methods of teaching?
   • Does the new method offer unique teaching methods?
3. What campus infra-structure facilities will be needed to implement VR systems i.e.
   • Hardware requirements
   • Software and its support implications
   • Network and bandwidth requirements
   • Advisory, training and information support

A further concern for institutions is that of the health and safety of their staff. Huw Jones brought this issue to the attention of the workshop in addressing the concerns which are around concerning the use of VR. Such concerns often relate to entering and leaving virtual environments (e.g. neck stress, hearing loss, nausea). Huw widened the discussion in recognising that the issues can be broadly categorised as physical and mental health problems with short and long term effects. Most concerns which are commonly listed fall into the category of short term physical problems. Issues such as eye strain, exposure to electromagnetic fields fall into the long term potential hazards. Psychological addiction, problems associated with isolation in virtual environments are examples of mental health hazards. If VR is to be taken seriously, then the developments need to be accompanied by research into these health problems so that all possible safeguards can be taken. We need to lobby for such work to be undertaken.

Awareness

• information provision - there is a need to exchange ideas and to make the technology and it potential better known in HE
• demonstrators - in order to illustrate the potential benefits, there is a need for proof-of-principle demonstrators that people can try out by downloading them from the network
• community voice - there is no well developed community which is involved in training, promotion, workshops etc to help with the flow of information between academe and industry, to promote VR with the general public and to provide a common voice to funding/political bodies

Standards

Henry Rzepa and Omer Casher also discussed the importance of VRML. They noted that VRML is currently significantly less mature than say HTML, and so is likely to develop rapidly. Some of the issues to be resolved include;

• Availability of VRML authoring and browsing software. CHEST should have a significant role to play here.
• Developing methods for indexing and structuring document collections. Programs such as Hyper-G or SiteMill may play an important role here.
• Develop methods for choreography of documents. JAVA will play an important role in making VRML files responsive to users.
• The development of SGML2VRML and CML2VRML filters. CML is a chemistry based SGML dtd being developed at Imperial. This in turn will impinge on the form of electronic journals of the future.
• Current generations of VRML browsers do not support disk caching. Although a compressed VRML description of a medium sized molecule is perhaps a factor of ten more compact than a 24-bit JPEG image, with more complex scenes the ratio can reverse. Network bandwidth needs to be carefully considered.
• The proprietary Microsoft "Blackbird" multi-media authoring initiative is attracting much attention, and there is some suggestion that VRML may be supported within this. The X-Window consortium also has a desktop product called "Broadway" under way, which purports to integrate X, NT, Desktops, and the Web. We need to understand the implications of this and other developments.
• We need to address the issues of how University teaching might change with increasing use of such tools. For example, does the current ethos of HEFC assessment of individual departments inhibit the creation of virtual 3D libraries of information not directly attributable to any particular institute? Will file encryption and charging issues complicate the implementation?
• Using VRML in a collaborative environment. This is a top priority among the VRML community. Imperial have already developed a prototype may be able to play a significant role here.

The need for standards in architectural applications was noted by Vassilis Bourdakis. The industry has long recognised the need for standards and now there is a need to go beyond formats such as Autocad's DXF format. VRML may be the format we need as it is gaining considerable recognition.

Design Issues

There has been a tendency for VR to be hailed as an unproblematic answer to many problems in computing, from database, through educational technology, to virtual museums. The task of making virtual environments is seen as a technical one - essentially of reconstructing reality in the computer. Indeed this is seen by many as a sufficient definition of VR. However, there are two clear problems. One is an assumption that a representation is the same thing as the thing it represents. The other misapprehension is that simulating reality will in itself be sufficient.

Even the most ambitious virtual reality will not be the reality it represents. It is clear that we are dealing with a representation: as creators of such environments we have both the obligations and the freedoms that any designer has in constructing a representation.

If we take the idea of a virtual museum - are we to limit ourselves to placing objects in fixed locations in a building of a given appearance? What is the point? It could be argued that a straightforward visual database is a better 'virtual museum' since it allows works to be located within as many dimensions as there are fields in the record. What do we gain by making a virtual physical construction? Nothing, unless we abandon some of the simplistic assumptions about virtuality. We are faced with a rich variety of choices. What should inform those choices? What questions should we ask ourselves?

These and other issues need to be addressed when using virtual environments. The adoption of non-realistic techniques, that is taking advantage of the non-physical nature of virtual environments (doing away with the physical constraints of distance and time) might benefit applications. The authors suggested that we need to stop thinking that the construction of virtual realities is a common-sense operation in which it is obvious what choices should be made, one in which design has no part.

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