From: Pat Costello <P.J.Costello@lboro.ac.uk
Subject: ANNOUNCE: New VR Support Post in the UK
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 10:45:10 +0000
Organization: Loughborough University




Announcing the new AGOCG VR Support Officers Role

From October 1st 1996 the post of AGOCG VR Support Officer has been in
place.  The post is based at the Advanced VR Research Centre (AVRRC) at
Loughborough University.  The requirement for this role came as a direct
consequence of an AGOCG workshop "The Potential of Virtual Reality for UK
Higher Education" and funding received through the JISC Technology
Applications Programme.  A key requirement of the Support Officer will be
to assist AGOCG in meeting its deliverables under this programme.
To achieve this the Support Officer will provide the following support:

Ensuring the VR community is informed by means of:

A world wide web site.
Provision of an on-line newsletter
Telephone and e-mail support
Organising workshop events
Attendance and feedback from appropriate conferences
Liaison with other research groups and industrial organisations

The Officer

The new Support Officer is Patrick Costello and he will be undertaking the
role on a full time basis.  His involvement in VR stems from a final year
dissertation on the human factors issues of using immersive VR headsets.
Following graduation from Loughborough in 1995 he was employed as a
Research Assistant  on an HSE funded project to determine the possible
visual side-effects of head-mounted displays.  The results of this research
have since been presented at conferences in the UK, Europe and the USA.

Present Projects

A report on the availability of 3D model databases on the WWW is currently
being prepared.

The main objectives of the report are:

*  To provide an overview of object modelling considerations for VR
applications.

*  To detail current formats and model composition.

*  To detail the requirements that the VR community may have.

*  To highlight the issues that must be considered when importing and
exporting models.

*  To identify a number of model databases for several modelling packages
that may be available.

*  To consider future developments in this area.

A mailing list has now been established using the Mailbase facility at the
University of Newcastle.  The mailing list title will be "agocg-vr" and the
list description is as follows:

This list is for general information and discussion about the use of VR in
UK Higher Education.  The list owner is the AGOCG VR support officer who
will use the list to disseminate information and current projects, events
and other issues.

The master list is "agocg-all" and the list is owned and moderated by the
VR Support Officer.  It is hoped that the mailing list will provide a forum
for discussion for those interested in this particular area and also as a
point of contact for parties who may have queries or wish to obtain further
information about the activities we wish to support.

As a further point of contact a World Wide Web server has been set up at
Loughborough.  It is hosted on a Silicon Graphics machine based in the
AVRRC laboratory.  This allows the VR Support Officer to maintain the site
in an efficient manner.  The URL is:

http://sgi-6.lut.ac.uk/~vrsupp

A number of hyperlinks to other useful sites are being established  and it
is envisaged that reports will be published here along with other useful
materials such as a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page which should be
generated by discussion on the mailing list.  The maintenance of this site
is seen is seen as an important and ongoing activity for the officer.


Further Information

If you have any comments or require further information Pat can be contacted at:

Advanced VR Research Centre
Dept. of Human Sciences
Loughborough University of Technology
Loughborough
Leicester
LE11 3TU

Tel: +44 1509-223037 x4266
Fax: +44  1509-223940

e-mail:  p.j.costello@lboro.ac.uk
WWW: http://sgi-6.lut.ac.uk/~vrsupp
Mailing list homepage: http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/agocg-vr/welcome.html

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