From diderot@hitl.washington.edu Mon Nov 14 09:22:35 1994 Return-Path: Received: from mx5.u.washington.edu by stein2.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW94.10/UW-NDC Revision: 2.31 ) id AA29525; Mon, 14 Nov 94 09:22:35 -0800 Received: from hitl-new.hitl.washington.edu by mx5.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW94.10/UW-NDC Revision: 2.31 ) id AA05888; Mon, 14 Nov 94 09:22:34 -0800 Received: by hitl.hitl.washington.edu; id AA25187; Mon, 14 Nov 1994 09:19:23 -0800 Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 09:19:23 -0800 X-Sender: diderot@hitl.washington.edu Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: scivw@hitl.washington.edu From: "L.G. Blanchard" (by way of diderot@hitl.washington.edu (Toni Emerson)) Subject: GreenSpace Release Status: OR FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FROM: L.G. Blanchard (206) 543-2580 DATE: Nov. 14, 1994 NOTE TO EDITORS/REPORTERS: The system described below will be demonstrated for the first time today (Monday, Nov. 14) immediately following a short briefing for reporters at 4:30 p.m. Go to room 215, Washington Technology Center (Fluke Hall, on the east side of the main UW campus). Limited B-roll video is available upon request. __________________________________________________________________ "Virtual common" experiment to span the Pacific Rim with live 3-D telecommunications __________________________________________________________________ A cooperative U.S.-Japanese team is testing a long-distance virtual reality system its creators say could spark a new era in teleconferencing. The system is being demonstrated for the first time this week on both sides of the Pacific. The demonstration also is believed to be the first-ever direct virtual reality link between North America and Asia. Using an existing, 5,200 mile-long fiber optic cable under the North Pacific, the system enables users to see animated, photo-realistic 3-D likenesses of each other's faces and to interact in real-time across thousands of miles within a shared, graphically high- quality environment--also in 3-D. Consistent with the motif of a common--a park-like community meeting place--the project has been named GreenSpace by its creators, Thomas A. Furness III, director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the Washington Technology Center and a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Washington College of Engineering; and Masahiro Kawahata, an international telecommunications expert who is director of the Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo, a professor at Tokai University and an affiliate professor of industrial engineering at the UW. "Through GreenSpace, we hope to form a dynamic virtual common in which people can meet and interact using a worldwide transportation system for their senses, without the need for traveling physically," Furness explained. "The goal is to create a high- bandwidth international network for bringing people, ideas and data bases together in a shared, virtual environment that's rich in visual and aural cues." The GreenSpace demonstration coincides with the Nov. 15-18 NICOGRAPH (Nippon Computer Graphics) trade show held annually in Tokyo. For several hours each day of the four-day demonstration, which starts today (Monday, Nov. 14) in the Pacific U.S. time zone, participants located at the UW campus laboratory and the NICOGRAPH conference will be able to give GreenSpace a trial run. In the demonstration, up to two persons at both ends of the network will don head-mounted video displays and come together in specially created virtual meeting rooms equipped with either Occidental or Oriental furnishings, suggesting that they have traveled to the network's other shore. However, participants will have the impression that everyone is in the same room sitting around the same conference table. They then will play a short, interactive game in which creatures will materialize that only can be captured with the cooperation of two or more participants using conventional, magnetic hand-movement tracking devices. Future GreenSpace demonstrations, now planned to take place next summer, will add tactile cues and computerized, photo-realistic maps of participants' faces that will move as they speak, Furness explained. When synchronized with actual voice audio, this will create the impression of actual facial movement. A number of technical problems had to be solved to make the system work, according to Paul Danset, chief project engineer. Even a relatively simple virtual reality network such as the one developed for GreenSpace involves a high degree of complex coordination between computer software and hardware at several points. The system must be capable of processing continuous, two-way exchanges of large amounts of digitized information. The initial GreenSpace demonstration uses a small portion of the North Pacific Cable, the largest-capacity fiber optic cable under the Pacific--capable of carrying 1,260 megabits per second, equivalent to 85,000 simultaneous telephone calls. Associated hardware and software used in the demonstration include Onyx and Indy machines from Silicon Graphics; head-mounted displays from Virtual Research Systems Inc.; magnetic trackers from Polhemus; and a video teleconferencing system from PictureTel. Principal funding for the Greenspace project was provided by a $200,000 grant from Fujitsu Research Institute. Trans-Pacific cable access for the project was donated by Pacific Telecom Cable Inc. of Vancouver, Wash. Additional support was provided by U S West Communications Inc., International Digital Communications Inc., Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Inc., IDB WorldCom Inc., Gandalf Systems Inc., ADC Kentrox Inc., SJI Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Ascend Communications Inc. #uw133# For more information, contact Furness at (206) 685-3215; in Japan, Kawahata can be reached at (011) 03-3437-3271. From diderot@hitl.washington.eduThu Dec 29 11:11:57 1994 Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 10:28:54 -0800 From: Toni Emerson To: scivw@hitl.washington.edu Subject: GreenSpace Tech Sheet GreenSpace NETWORK PROVIDERS Joe Buongiorno, Joseph Chan, Jim Elias, and John Larson of U S WEST Communications provided local carrier services and hours of consulting Scott Mah of UW Telecommunications provided campus telecommunications services and consulting Mike Williams of IDB WorldCom provided interstate network services Dennis Zanone of Pacific Telecom Cable, Inc. provided trans-Pacific network services IDC provided trans-Pacific network services COMMUNICATIONS EQUIPMENT Craig Perry of ADC Kentrox provided DSU/CSUs Merrill McAdams of Cisco Systems provided IP routers Pat Yantis of Gandalf Systems provided terminal adapters VENDORS Silicon Graphics provided Onyx and Indy computers NTT provided local carrier service in Japan Mike Rushing of SJI provided ISDN routers PictureTel provided a videoconferencing system The GreenSpace Project Human Interface Technology Laboratory Washington Technology Center, University of Washington The Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HITL) has developed a demonstration of a "virtual common" system, in which participants separated by great geographical distances can meet together in a virtual room to interact and share ideas. The demonstration is intended to promote interest in virtual environments technology, and lead to further development of high bandwidth networks and multiple endpoints. The GreenSpace project is funded by Fujitsu Research Institute (Japan). Two computational engines are used at each endpoint of the demonstration. One Onyx Reality Engine from Silicon Graphics computes and renders the local representation of the virtual environment. An Indy workstation works in tandem with the Onyx to provide audio and video processing. Before a participant enters the virtual common, his/her face is digitized in various expressions with a video camera. The player then dons a head-mounted display and is presented with a view of the virtual world which is tracked to the player's head position. The participant controls the location of a virtual hand using a position-sensing glove. Participants are able to hear each other by sending 8KHz 8-bit audio data over the network. This data stream is also processed by a phoneme recognition system and used to modify how the user's face appears to other participants. One significant technical barrier is information compression. We chose to use ISDN digital telephony for our connectivity due to its international availability. The diagram below indicates the configuration of the system. This connectivity option limits the data exchange between terminal sites to 384 kpbs. This restriction is overcome with a carefully specified communication protocol. Another important design hurdle is the lag time inherent in a long-distance network. In our configuration, a packet takes approximately 1/3 second to make a round trip between Seattle and Tokyo due to the switches and repeaters between both sites. Further lag is introduced in the time it takes to read head and hand positions, and in the delay introduced when computing the graphical displays. The desired outcome of the project is to create a virtual common which eliminates the physical distance between participants. In the demonstration, players will cooperate and interact together by herding a flock of imaginary creatures. The purpose of the game is to demonstrate how participants, in geographically disparate locations, can use virtual environments technology to interact in an intuitive, physical manner to solve problems together. Future plans for the GreenSpace project include the use of high-bandwidth wide area network technologies such as ATM. This will facilitate multiple endpoint conferences with more participants and a more realistic experience for the participants. Another possibility is using spatialized audio to enhance the participants' sense of presence. - end - --------------------Toni Emerson, Research Consultant------------------- "An ideal map would contain the map of the map, the map of the map of the map...endlessly." --Alfred Korzybski -------------------HIT Lab, FJ-15, UofW, Seattle, WA 98195-------------