From: Hendrik-Jan van Veen <veen@mpik-tueb.mpg.de>
Subject: APPS: Virtual Tubingen : Using VR in human behavioural sciences
Date: Wed, 07 Aug 1996 18:24:06 +0200
Message-ID: <3208C326.167E@mpik-tueb.mpg.de>
Organization: Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics



VIRTUAL TUBINGEN


In our lab we use virtual reality technologies to investigate human
perception and behaviour. Part of our scientific mission is to prove
that highly realistic interactive virtual environments can provide a
very useful setting for experimental studies in human behaviour. One
of our research topics is human navigation in natural and virtual
environments. In this context, an interesting question relates to the
differences in human behaviour between navigating in a real part of
the world (the natural environment) and navigating in a virtual model
of it (the virtual environment). To be able to answer this kind of
questions we started building a virtual model of the city Tubingen
(this is were our lab is). Currently we have modelled about 30 houses
but we plan to model the larger part of the old centrum of the town
(500-1000 houses). We aim for a high degree of visual realism using
photorealistic textures, which, combined with the high framerates
necessary for real-time inteaction, is of course very demanding in
terms of rendering hardware (we currently use a SGI Onynx RE2). After
having modelled the first houses now we would like to have some
feedback about the way we are approaching this project. So, if you're
interested in this project and can advice us somewhere, or if you just
want to see some nice pictures and VRML-models, go and visit our
Virtual Tubingen webpage:

    http://www.mpik-tueb.mpg.de/projects/vrtueb/vrtueb.html

E-mail to me would be fine, but a discussion in the newsgroup wouldn't
be bad either. Thanks for your attention.


Dr. Hendrik-Jan van Veen


Max-Planck-Institut fur Biologische Kybernetik
Spemannstrasse 38 -- 72076 Tuebingen -- GERMANY
E-MAIL:	veen@mpik-tueb.mpg.de
TEL: 	+49-7071-601-631  FAX: 	+49-7071-601-616
WEB:	http://www.mpik-tueb.mpg.de/people/personal/veen/veen.html