From: Mark Mine Subject: INDUSTRY: Successful VR Apps Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 15:58:33 -0500 (EST) Greetings, My question: Does anybody really use VR for real work? In other words, I'm interested in hearing what people consider examples of "Successful VR applications". Specifically, I am looking for examples of applications that have been implemented in a virtual environment that have demonstrated some measure of success (commercial, solved a problem that couldn't be solved otherwise, etc). Personally, I don't know of any clear cut winners, but some examples that come close (and perhaps could have been even more effective given improvements in technology such as display resolution and rendering speed) include: - Architectural walkthrough (such as the work here at UNC) - Phobia treatment via exposure therapy (like the work at Georgia Tech) - Scientific visualization (NASA's virtual windtunnel, UNC's nanomanipulator project) - Marketing (virtual showrooms) Like I said, none of these are clear cut winners (i.e. they haven't gotten much beyond the research labs), but at least they show some promise. I'm most interested in hearing about immersive virtual environment applications using head-mounted displays or Booms (my personal bias), but I'd also be interested in hearing about "Cave" and "fishtank VR" type applications as well. In forming your response please indicate how much you think the "success" of the application is due to being in a virtual environment (immersion, direct manipulation, etc.) and how much is just due to real-time interactive graphics (i.e. it would have worked just as well sitting in front of a conventional computer monitor, forget all the fancy tracking, displays, and input devices). Also, what is keeping the "near misses" from being "direct hits"? Cost? Quality of the technology? Wrong applications? Looking forward to hearing what's out there... Thanks. Mark Mark R. Mine University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Computer Science Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3175 U.S.A. From: Mark Mine Message-Id: <199611302058.PAA26974@puffer.cs.unc.edu> Subject: INDUSTRY: Successful VR Apps Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 15:58:33 -0500 (EST) Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds Greetings, My question: Does anybody really use VR for real work? In other words, I'm interested in hearing what people consider examples of "Successful VR applications". Specifically, I am looking for examples of applications that have been implemented in a virtual environment that have demonstrated some measure of success (commercial, solved a problem that couldn't be solved otherwise, etc). Personally, I don't know of any clear cut winners, but some examples that come close (and perhaps could have been even more effective given improvements in technology such as display resolution and rendering speed) include: - Architectural walkthrough (such as the work here at UNC) - Phobia treatment via exposure therapy (like the work at Georgia Tech) - Scientific visualization (NASA's virtual windtunnel, UNC's nanomanipulator project) - Marketing (virtual showrooms) Like I said, none of these are clear cut winners (i.e. they haven't gotten much beyond the research labs), but at least they show some promise. I'm most interested in hearing about immersive virtual environment applications using head-mounted displays or Booms (my personal bias), but I'd also be interested in hearing about "Cave" and "fishtank VR" type applications as well. In forming your response please indicate how much you think the "success" of the application is due to being in a virtual environment (immersion, direct manipulation, etc.) and how much is just due to real-time interactive graphics (i.e. it would have worked just as well sitting in front of a conventional computer monitor, forget all the fancy tracking, displays, and input devices). Also, what is keeping the "near misses" from being "direct hits"? Cost? Quality of the technology? Wrong applications? Looking forward to hearing what's out there... Thanks. Mark Mark R. Mine University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Computer Science Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3175 U.S.A. mine@cs.unc.edu