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Welcome to our FUTURE!!

 

 

Virtual Reality, Tele-Immersion,

& Immersive Environments!

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Introduction

 Mixed Reality, Is it the start of something new, the future?

Definitions for the future:

Virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) is a technology which allows a user to interact with a computer-simulated environment. Most virtual reality environments are primarily visual experiences, displayed either on a computer screen or through special stereoscopic displays, but some simulations include additional sensory information, such as sound through speakers or headphones. Some advanced and experimental systems have included limited tactile information, known as force feedback. Users can interact with a virtual environment either through the use of standard input devices such as a keyboard and mouse, or through multimodal devices such as a wired glove, the Polhemus boom arm, and/or omnidirectional treadmill. The simulated environment can be similar to the real world, for example, simulations for pilot or combat training, or it can differ significantly from reality, as in VR games. In practice, it is currently very difficult to create a high-fidelity virtual reality experience, due largely to technical limitations on processing power, image resolution and communication bandwidth. However, those limitations are expected to eventually be overcome as processor, imaging and data communication technologies become more powerful and cost-effective over time.

Immersive digital environment

An immersive digital environment is an artificial, interactive, computer-created scene or "world" within which a user can immerse themselves.

Immersive Digital Environments could be thought of as synonymous with Virtual Reality, but without the implication that actual "reality" is being simulated. An Immersive Digital Environment could be a model of reality, but it could also be a complete fantasy user interface or abstraction, as long as the user of the environment is immersed within it. The definition of immersion is wide and variable, but here it is assumed to mean simply that the user feels like they are part of the simulated "universe". The success with which an immersive digital environment can actually immerse the user is dependant on many factors such as believable 3D graphics, surround sound, interactive user-input and other factors such as simplicity, functionality and potential for enjoyment.

Teleimmersion

Teleimmersion combines virtual reality and videoconferencing to enable people at geographically disperse locations to collaborate in real time in a shared, simulated environment, where they have access to the same media, computer applications, images, audio and simulations.

Introduction
Using teleimmersion, you can visit an individual across the world without stepping a foot outside your room. Advancements in telecommunication and media compression and processing techniques make telecommunicating geographically possible.

What is tele-immersion?
Tele-Immersion is a new medium that enables a user to share a virtual space with remote participants. The user is immersed in a 3D world that is transmitted from a remote site. This medium for human interaction, enabled by digital technology, approximates the illusion that a person is in the same physical space as others, even though they may be thousands of miles distant. It combines the display and interaction techniques of virtual reality with new computer-vision technologies. Thus with the aid of this new technology, users at geographically distributed sites can collaborate in real time in a shared, simulated, hybrid environment submerging in one another’s presence and feel as if they are sharing the same physical space. It is the ultimate synthesis of media technologies:

3D environment scanning
projective and display technologies
tracking technologies
audio technologies
The considerable requirements for tele-immersion system, make it one of the most challenging net applications.

In a tele-immersive environment computers recognize the presence and movements of individuals and objects, track those individuals and images, and then permit them to be projected in realistic, multiple, geographically distributed immersive environments on stereo-immersive surfaces. This requires sampling and resynthesis of the physical environment as well as the users' faces and bodies, which is a new challenge that will move the range of emerging technologies, such as scene depth extraction and warp rendering, to the next level.

Tele-immersive environments will therefore facilitate not only interaction between users themselves but also between users and computer generated models and simulations. This will require expanding the boundaries of computer vision, tracking, display, and rendering technologies. As a result, all of this will enable users to achieve a compelling experience and it will lay the groundwork for a higher degree of their inclusion into the entire system.

Tele-immersive systems have potential to significantly change educational, scientific and manufacturing paradigms. They will show their full strength in the systems where having 3D reconstructed ‘real’ objects coupled with 3D virtual objects is crucial for the successful fulfillment of the tasks. It may also be the case that some tasks would not be possible to complete without having such combination of sensory information. There are several applications that will profit from tele-immersive systems. Collaborative mechanical CAD applications as well as different medical applications are two that will benefit significantly.

Tele-immersion may sound like conventional video conferencing. But it is much more. Where video conferencing delivers flat images to a screen, tele-immersion recreates an entire remote environment. Although not so, tele-immersion may seem like another kind of virtual reality. Virtual reality allows people to move around in a pre-programmed representation of a 3D environment, whereas tele-immersion is measuring the real world and conveying the results to the sensory system.

So what is all of this?

How does it all work?

What is this innovation?

Using what we already know now to improve upon the future of telecommunication through tele-immersion into immersive environments.  For example, the use of body sensors to create virtual reality within these environments.  Check this animation creation out!

Here is another example for experimentation for improvement.

What are the promises and opportunities?

There is constantly new research and experimentation going on to improve and expand upon the capabilities for tele-immersion.  There is one organization in particular that is extremely committed to its innovation for the purpose of education!

A National Tele-Immersion Initiative leads the way to make all these things possible. They are working on projects to have users share the same physical space in a real time world, as if they are sitting in front of each other in the same room. In this regard, Advanced Network & Services played a vital role, to bring together the experts in this field together. Jaron Lanier, one of the pioneers in development of Virtual Reality (which according to him is “the brain anticipates a virtual world instead of the physical one”) in 1980’s, is involved with the team, which started work in middle of 1997 with collaboration from Brown University, Providence Naval Post Guard School, Monterey University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and University of California, Berkeley.

 

Another man's thought on the future of education:

Overall assessment of commercial potential

The talk about the virtual world is far from over.  In fact, we are only in the first stages of it all now.  The potential for the combination of Virtual Reality, Tele-immersion, and Immersive Environments is far greater than virtual insanity!

It will give us a better opportunity to:

            -Interact with one another differently

            -Resource other organizations and areas

            -Manage events and situations differently

            -Brainstorm and discover new things from what's newly visible to us

            -Launch new ideas and products faster

            -Modify environments interactively         

Summary of current and potential products and services

Consider visiting somewhere from the opposite side of the country, or globe for that matter. In this picture above, a man visits, through tele-immersion into the immersive environment, a cathdral.

Or look at scenery and see in the to past or peer into the future.

This is just the beginning of education, and what will come after that? 

Perhaps training, on-the-job experience before you get on-the-job!  Here is an example of a human Pacman game, that is similar to what "on-the-job" training could consist of, if you can imagine that.

Or what about fundraising, campaining, and marketing.  What better way to show your investors a new idea or product than to bring them to it.  Why not show them how well it works by having them there for the trials?

Challenges for the Future

Where will the technology stop?

                Is there appropriate hardware to visualize everything in the future?

                Multi-camera systems

                Multi-display systems

                Multi-control systems

        Is there enough bandwidth to transfer all of these virtual and tele-immersive material or must it be compressed?

                Will time be an (real)time become an issue?

Is it cost effective enough to see this happening everywhere in the future?

Virtual Insanity

"Virtual Insanity"

Oh yeah, what we're living in (let me tell ya)
It's a wonder man can eat at all
When things are big that should be small
Who can tell what magic spells we'll be doing for us
And I'm giving all my love to this world
Only to be told
I can't see
I can't breathe
No more will we be
And nothing's going to change the way we live
Cos' we can always take but never give
And now that things are changing for the worse,
See, its a crazy world we're living in
And I just can't see that half of us immersed in sin
Is all we have to give these -

Futures made of virtual insanity now
Always seem to, be govern'd by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound - for we all live underground

And I'm thinking what a mess we're in
Hard to know where to begin
If I could slip the sickly ties that earthly man has made
And now every mother, can choose the colour
Of her child
That's not nature's way
Well that's what they said yesterday
There's nothing left to do but pray
I think it's time I found a new religion
Waoh - it's so insane
To synthesize another strain
There's something in these
Futures that we have to be told.

Futures made of virtual insanity - now
Always seem to, be govern'd by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound - for we all live underground

Now there is no sound
If we all live underground
And now it's virtual insanity
Forget your virtual reality
Oh, there's nothing so bad.
I know yeah

Of this virtual insanity, we're livin in.
Has got to change, yeah
Things, will never be the same.
And I can't go on
While we're livin' in oh, oh virtual insanity
Oh, this world, has got to change
Cos I just, I just can't keep going on, it was virtual.
Virtual insanity that we're livin' in, that we're livin' in
That virtual insanity is what it is

Futures made of virtual insanity - now
Always seem to, be govern'd by this love we have
For useless, twisting, our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound - for we all live underground

Living - Virtual Insanity
Living - Virtual Insanity
Living - Virtual Insanity
Living - Virtual Insanity

Virtual Insanity is what we're living in 
 

JAMIROQUAI, 1997