Journal: Government Computer News August 8, 1994 v13 n17 p1(2) COPYRIGHT Cahners Publishing Associates LP 1994 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Title: Federal explorers find a means to an end through virtual reality. (Siggraph '94 conference) Author: Morgan, Cynthia Abstract: Federal agencies' experiments on virtual reality technology were on display at Siggraph '94 in Orlando, FL. The Argonne National Laboratory of the Energy Department set up a virtual factory with a 12-processor IBM Powerparallel SP2 supercomputer, which allowed visitors to participate in four manufacturing processes. The Sandia National Laboratories' Synthetic Environment Group uses virtual reality to expand human mental skills. Its Multidimensional User-oriented Synthetic Environment (MUSE) matches I/O devices with massive amounts of data. MUSE has been used for human tissue research, seismic analysis, radioactive container inspection and dynamic models of the solar system. NASA, on its part, is using virtual reality for space shuttle experiments with a simulated wind tunnel that runs on a Silicon Graphics Onyx machine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Full Text: ORLANDO, Fla.--Search for tumors inside a living brain. Target budget anomalies in seconds. Quickly find safe positions for your soldiers on a battlefield. Defuse a bomb before it detonates. Rearrange molecules to design a new drug. Slip inside a copper pipe as it's welded to steel. In such scenarios, learning by experience is costly, impossible, even fatal. But computer simulation can present a taste of them safely and cheaply. The next step, virtual reality, creates an explorable environment around the simulation. At last month's Siggraph computer graphics conference here, federal explorers showed how they're doing it. The Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory built a virtual factory at the show, using a 12-processor IBM Corp. Powerparallel SP2 supercomputer. Visitors with tracking headgear and wand-style input devices took part in four manufacturing processes in Siggraph's Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, or CAVE. A virtual grinding machine put visitors right next to the raw material. They worked on improving exhaust fume recovery systems, manipulating complex metal castings and sculpting new drug molecules. "The idea," one demonstrator said, "is to give researchers design tools that are too complex or dangerous for the real world." The CAVE now will be reassembled at Argonne, where researchers hope to link it with three other CAVEs in the United States through a high-speed optical fiber network. For Creve Maples, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratories' Synthetic Environment group, virtual reality is all about expanding mental skills: "It doesn't matter if I can compute in five seconds what used to take an hour, if my brain can't correlate the data easily." Maples' project, the Multidimensional User-oriented Synthetic Environment (MUSE), puts an interface between large amounts of data and input/output devices. "You take a grid of information and give MUSE its parameters," he said, "and it'll map your data to the devices chosen, whether you want to hear, see or feel the data." The human brain automatically models routine tasks, Maples said. "You don't think about every detail when you drive. You watch for anomalies that break a known patern, such as a car suddenly stopping or the blare of a horn." MUSE translates "huge quantities of information, more than can be absorbed by the brain's cognitive processes, into sensory output," he said. Using the MUSE shell, engineers found out why an explosive weld between copper pipe and steel plate didn't hold. "They came to me with 150M of data in eight dimensions," Maples said. MUSE shells have been built around computer tomography scans so researchers can "fly" through human tissue searching for tumors. MUSE also has been used for seismic analysis, radioactive container inspection and dynamic models of the solar system. Sandia is studying MUSE as an administrative tool to analyze spending patterns, Maples said. Other agencies have expressed interest in using future versions of MUSE. NASA scientists are running space shuttle experiments without a wind tunnel using virtual reality techniques. "We already knew it's much less expensive to test a model on the computer than in a physical wind tunnel," Bryson said. "What we're trying to do is perfect the user interaction." The tunnel runs on a four-processor Silicon Graphics Inc. Onyx machine with a full gigabyte of memory to handle large data sets. Bryson estimated the total system cost around $550,000--far less than a real wind tunnel. At the Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., developers are generating dynamic combat terrains for training infantry. The simulations, on clusters of high-performance RISC systems, will familiarize solidiers with dangerous terrain at potential war sites. Land warrior The lab's Siggraph demonstration, known as Land Warrior, consisted of a stair-stepper exercise machine, 486 PC, Sparcbook notebook computer and Silicon Graphics Inc. virtual reality engine to simulate a hike through mountainous terrain. Army researchers in Florida have mapped an entire building for a fly-through experiment using a 175-MHz Digital Equipment Corp. 3000 Model 600 Alpha workstation. The simulation, shown at Siggraph with a tracking helmet and mouse, displayed books and personal photos inside offices. Army officials said the prototype might be used to brief