I just got back from visiting the exciting C6 simultor at Iowa State. It is a six-sided VR “cave” that projects images onto every wall, including the ceiling and the floor. Tonight they did a program on fire safety where we had to identify all of the fire hazards in the many rooms of the Colorado mansion, and then get on our hands and knees when the smoke started to fill the room.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was mildly disappointed. I had played the Virtuality VR game (you remember – with the headset and and the round magnetic ring that you stood in) and that was fun. But this was awfully jerky and even less photo-realistic than BZ-flag. They had SGI computers running Linux, and the nice lady who ran the simulation told us they were hopig to upgrade the computers soon.
It was still fun though – at one point our “guide” who was controlling the simulation opened a door but didn’t wait to go through it, so we all kind of smacked into the door. At another point we were walking down a hallway and I must have been looking all around and walking myself because I realized just in time that I was up against one of the walls.
It shows promise, but I thought they were further along than that. But still, very very cool.
