schur@isi.edu (Sean Schur) (04/23/91)
I am interested in finding out if anyone out there has heard about an application of VR that a friend told me about. He heard that VR is being used by the gas company in Seattle. Supposedly the gas flow for the city used to be controlled in a large room by rows of computer terminals with technicians turning knobs and values to change the gas flow within the city. At times the control of particular problems could become quite difficult, having to move flow from low usage areas into high usage areas would entail the coordination of several different technicians working together to alleviate a problem. As I heard the story, this is all being controlled now by a single person in a room with a pair of eyephones and a glove. Supposedly this individual is "virtually" flying over a rendition of the city where the gas flow levels are represented to him as peaks and valleys superimposed over the city. Problem areas, reaching high peaks would flash at him. He can reach out and push down peaks with his hand (dataglove) or pull up low areas. He can turn off the flow to a particular area where there might be a leak with a gesture. Let me reiterate here that this is heresay. It was told to my friend as a "current usage of VR", as if it has already been implemented. But I have seen no mention of it here or heard anything about it since. This leads me to believe that it is a) a story someone made up about a possible application, b) a project currently being worked on by someone, possibly a joint venture between some university and a gas company or c) actually in use but not common knowledge. I am beginning to doubt option c). I think a project like this would have gotten a great deal of publicity if it had happened. With all of the publicity being given to VR these days, I would expect that someone would have mentioned it. Maybe someone up at HIT labs would know something about it since it is up in your neck of the woods. Maybe HIT labs is working on it. If anyone has heard anything about this or has any further information I would appreciate it if you would contact me. I am working on a presentation for a major corporation on VR and would like to be able to describe as many current "in use" applications as possible. I would also like my information to be accurate. Along the same lines, if anyone has interested applications "in use" that they know about or projects they are working on I would also be interested. I would be willing to compile a list and post it, as I believe it would be of great interest to this newsgroup. ======================================================================= Sean Schur USENET: schur@isi.edu Assistant Director Amiga/Media Lab Compuserve: 70731,1102 Character Animation Department Plink: OSS259 California Institute of the Arts =======================================================================