• How researchers use real-life 3-D holodecks to explore virtual frontiers

    Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

    University of Illinois-Chicago computer scientist Jason Leigh stands in the CAVE2 virtual-reality system, where 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels encircle the viewer.

    By Carla K. Johnson, The Associated Press

    CHICAGO — Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3-D glasses can do all that and more.

    In the system, known as CAVE2, an 8-foot-high (2.4-meter-high) screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what's not really there.

    As far back as 1950, sci-fi author Ray Bradbury imagined a children's nursery that could make bedtime stories disturbingly real. "Star Trek" fans might remember the holodeck as the virtual playground where the fictional Enterprise crew relaxed in fantasy worlds.

    The Illinois computer scientists have more serious matters in mind when they hand visitors 3-D glasses and a controller called a "wand." Scientists in many fields today share a common challenge: How to truly understand overwhelming amounts of data. Jason Leigh, co-inventor of the CAVE2 virtual reality system, believes this technology answers that challenge.

    "In the next five years, we anticipate using the CAVE to look at really large-scale data to help scientists make sense of that information. CAVEs are essentially fantastic lenses for bringing data into focus," Leigh said.

    The CAVE2 virtual world could change the way doctors are trained and improve patient care, Leigh said. Pharmaceutical researchers could use it to model the way new drugs bind to proteins in the human body. Car designers could virtually "drive" their vehicle designs.

    Imagine turning massive amounts of data — the forces behind a hurricane, for example — into a simulation that a weather researcher could enlarge and explore from the inside. Architects could walk through their skyscrapers before they are built. Surgeons could rehearse a procedure using data from an individual patient.

    Charles Rex Arbogast / AP

    Brain surgeon Ali Alaraj talks about the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2. "You can walk between the blood vessels," said the University of Illinois College of Medicine neurosurgeon. "You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side."

    CAVEs aren't cheap
    But the size and expense of room-based virtual reality systems may prove insurmountable barriers to widespread use, said Henry Fuchs, a computer science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who is familiar with the CAVE technology but wasn't involved in its development.

    While he calls the CAVE2 "a national treasure," Fuchs predicts a smaller technology such as Google's Internet-connected eyeglasses will do more to revolutionize medicine than the CAVE. Still, he says large displays are the best way today for people to interact and collaborate.

    Believers include the people at Marshalltown, Iowa-based Mechdyne Corp., which has licensed the CAVE2 technology for three years and plans to market it to hospitals, the military and in the oil and gas industry, said Kurt Hoffmeister of Mechdyne.

    In Chicago, researchers and graduate students are creating virtual scenarios for testing in the CAVE2. The Mars flyover is created from real NASA data. The brain tour is based on the layout of blood vessels in a real patient.

    Brain surgeon Ali Alaraj remembered the first time he viewed the brain using the CAVE2.

    "You can walk between the blood vessels," said the University of Illinois College of Medicine neurosurgeon. "You can look at the arteries from below. You can look at the arteries from the side.... That was science fiction for me."

    How CAVEs compare
    Would doctors process information faster with fewer errors using CAVE2? That's the question behind a proposed study that would compare CAVE2 to conventional methods of detecting brain aneurysms and determining proper treatment, said Andreas Linninger, UIC professor of bioengineering, chemical engineering and computer science.

    But it's not all serious business at the lab.

    In his spare time during the past two years, research assistant Arthur Nishimoto has been programming the CAVE2 computer with the specifications for the fictional Starship Enterprise. He now can walk around his life-size re-creation of the TV spacecraft.

    The original technology, introduced in the early 1990s, was called CAVE, which stood for Cave Automatic Virtual Environment and also cleverly referred to Plato's cave, the philosopher's analogy about shadows and reality. It was named by former lab co-directors Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin.

    The second generation of the CAVE, invented by Leigh and his collaborator Andy Johnson, has higher resolution. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

    "It's fantastic to come to work. Every day is like getting to live a science fiction dream," Leigh said. "To do science in this kind of environment is absolutely amazing."

    More about virtual environments:

    Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. 

     

  • Virtual superpowers may make you a better person in real life

    Cody Karutz

    A virtual child after being found and saved in a "superhero study."

    By Charles Q. Choi
    LiveScience

    It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a superhero flying in a virtual sky! Scientists now find that seeing superpowers in a virtual-reality game may lead people to act more virtuously in real life.

    Virtual-reality technology uses video displays and other gear to immerse people in realistic digital environments. Virtual reality can lead to mind-bending experiences, such as making users think they have swapped bodies with someone else. The effects of virtual reality can endure long after these experiences, which psychologists hope can help in therapies for ailments such as phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    To see if embodying a helpful role in virtual reality made people more helpful afterward, scientists had 60 volunteers don virtual reality helmets and engage in scenarios where they were either given the power of flight or rode as passengers in a helicopter. They were also assigned one of two tasks — they had to tour a virtual city or help find a missing diabetic child in need of insulin.

    Regardless of which task the volunteers performed, those who were given the power to fly like Superman in virtual reality were more helpful afterward in the real world compared with participants who were passengers in the virtual helicopter. Specifically, volunteers who had virtual superpowers moved about three times faster on average than virtual helicopter passengers did to help experimenters pick up spilled pens after their virtual experiences — in fact, the six volunteers who did not help at all had all ridden in the virtual helicopter. [ Hero Helpers: 10 Best Sidekicks in Comic Book History ]

    Cody Karutz

    In Panel A, the experimenter is "accidentally" knocking over the pens; in Panel B, a participant gets out the chair and kneels to help pick up the pens. Note: The images are slightly blurry as the surveillance cameras do not capture in high resolution.

    "The experience of super-flight in and of itself appears to be the salient variable that led people to help outside of virtual reality," said researcher Robin Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Stanford, Calif., and author of "Superhero Origins: What Makes Superheroes Tick and Why We Care" (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013).

    The investigators suggest that embodying a superpower in virtual reality may prepare players to think like superheroes so that they behave better later. Another possibility is that participants given the virtual superpower of flight may have felt more active than those who passively sat in the helicopter, and this mindset may have influenced their subsequent behavior.

    The scientists said they shared their findings with Paul Levitz, a comic book editor and writer and former DC Comics publisher and president.

    Levitz noted that people familiar with superhero tropes implicitly know that after characters discover superpowers, they have to decide to use them for personal gain or for the greater good. Perhaps that implicit knowledge influenced this study, leading super-flight volunteers to decide unconsciously and perhaps automatically to use their power for good.

    This research could potentially be applied to creating games that could help promote real-life helpful behavior in both children and adults.

    "As console gaming devices increasingly bring elements of virtual reality info people's homes, such experiences may have a significant effect on real-world behavior and the potential to do good," Rosenberg told LiveScience.

    Future studies might investigate whether embodying a specific superhero such as Superman might strengthen this effect. Also, "do these results generalize to regular computer experiences — for example, computer games — or is virtual reality a key ingredient?" Rosenberg asked. "Would more time flying in virtual reality lead to a greater effect?" And "would giving people different enhanced abilities or powers, such as super strength, heat or laser vision, lead to the same effect?"

    Rosenberg and colleagues Shawnee Baughman and Jeremy Bailenson detailed their findings online Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

    Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on  Facebook and Google+.