Over a career of 42 years, Prof. Furness has been exploring and developing technology tools for getting bandwidth to the brain and between brains. His work has encompassed fighter cockpits, virtual reality, retinal displays, educational tools, medical simulators, pain, phobias, molecular modeling, scanning fiber endoscopes and entertainment systems. This quest has been punctuated with side trips and aha experiences that have led to unanticipated destinations, many of which have involved distributed and real-time simulation. Dr. Furness plans to talk about lessons learned on his journey including unexpected delights...with an aim to inspire, entertain and challenge conference attendees.

Tactile augmentation is a simple, safe, inexpensive interaction technique for adding physical texture and force feedback cues to virtual objects. This study explored whether virtual reality (VR) exposure therapy reduces fear of spiders and whether giving patients the illusion of physically touching the virtual spider increases treatment effectiveness. Eight clinically phobic students were randomly assigned to one of 3 groups-(a) no treatment, (b) VR with no tactile cues, or (c) VR with a physically "touchable" virtual spider-as were 28 nonclinically phobic students. Participants in the 2 VR treatment groups received three 1-hr exposure therapy sessions resulting in clinically significant drops in behavioral avoidance and subjective fear ratings. The tactile augmentation group showed the greatest progress on behavioral measures. On average, participants in this group, who only approached to 5.5 ft of a live spider on the pretreatment Behavioral Avoidance Test (Garcia-Palacios, 2002), were able to approach to 6 in. of the spider after VR exposure treatment and did so with much less anxiety (see www.vrpain.com for details). Practical implications are discussed.

For the goal of designing a wearable low vision aid, aspects of both head-mounted display (HMD) design and performance evaluation were integrated into a single study of scanning ability. A head-mounted version of a novel retinal light scanning display known as the virtual retinal display was fabricated for this study. A remote head CCD (charge coupled device) attached approximately at the user's line of sight was used as the input source. Scanning ability was quantified as the time to identify a target in a wide field of distractors while using the HMD design in four different display interface modes (DIMs). Each DIM was tested with respect to their corresponding controls: A (augmented, see-through) and CO (center occluded) DIMs were compared to the augmented control (augmented, retinal display turned off), and CPO (center and periphery occluded) and PO (periphery occluded) DIMs were compared to the periphery occluded control (periphery obstructed, retinal display turned off). Each DIM was tested at high, medium, and low contrast levels. Five subjects were tested without optical correction (visual acuity worse than 20/200), which accurately represented low vision subjects. Results showed that for each DIM, scanning performance decreased as the contrast level decreased. At the lowest contrast level, the PO DIM provided the greatest and most significant improvement in scanning performance. At the medium and highest contrast levels, all DIMs provided equal or worse performance than their controls. Additionally, the subjects' natural visual acuity showed no correlation with scan time. All subjects reported a higher acuity with the retinal display, and showed a diverse range of preference for the most helpful DIM. Based on these results, we realized that low vision applications have unique design requirements unlike those for normally sighted users, and therefore customization of a wearable low vision aid may be an optimal design strategy.

The extreme environment of a military cockpit requires a novel display technology, introduced as the virtual retinal display (VRD). A head-worn VRD generates an image by optical scanning light directly to the viewer's eye. This novel display allows the direct coupling of the display to an infrared optical head tracking system, resulting in an interactive VRD. With only minor adjustments, the interactive VRD can be used in many non-military AR and VR line-of-sight target tracking applications, such as image plane manipulations. Since the unique tracking technology shares the same aperture or scanned optical beam with the visual display, the tracking produces high accuracy and computational efficiency without the motion artifacts from video frame rate tracking. The apparatus and performance of static and dynamic 3D target tracking in 2D projection overlay are demonstrated.

The effects of field-of-view (FOV) in a virtual environment (VE) on presence, enjoyment, memory and simulator sickness (SS) were studied. A refined scale, designed to assess subjects' engagement, enjoyment and immersion (E/sup 2/I), was developed. Items to examine subjects' memory of the VE were included. SS was examined using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). Using a within-subjects design, data were collected from 10 subjects at four FOVs (60/spl deg/, 100/spl deg/, 140/spl deg/ and 180/spl deg/). The VE, called "Crayolaland", was presented in a driving simulator. The results indicated that presence, enjoyment and SS varied as a function of the display FOV. Subjects exhibited higher SSQ and presence subscale scores with increasing FOV. SSQ and presence values approached asymptotes for FOVs beyond 140/spl deg/. Presence and SS were positively correlated, while enjoyment and SS were negatively correlated.

Simulator sickness (SS) / virtual environment (VE) sickness is expected to become increasingly troublesome as VE technology evolves [20]. Procedures to alleviate SS / VE sickness have been of limited value [12]. This paper investigated a possible procedure to reduce SS and VE sickness. Postural disturbance was evoked by visual scene motion at different frequencies. Differences in disturbance were examined as a function of simultaneous exposure to an “independent visual background” (IVB). Eight subjects were tested at two scene motion frequencies and three different IVB conditions using a within-subjects design. An expected statistically significant interaction between IVB condition and frequency was observed. For low frequency scene movements, subjects exhibited less balance disturbance when the IVB was presented. We suggest that an IVB may alleviate disturbance when conflicting visual and inertial cues are likely to result in simulator or VE sickness.

With technological progress, wide field-of-view (FOV) displays will become increasingly common. Wide FOVs provide a more immersive environment and produce stronger self-motion perception. The objective of this study was to investigate the relationships between FOV and scene content on postural stability in an immersive environment. 10 subjects were tested using two different scenes (a simple radial pattern and a "meaningful" city scene) at six FOVs (30/spl deg/, 60/spl deg/, 90/spl deg/, 120/spl deg/, 150/spl deg/ 180/spl deg/) using a within-subjects design. Subjects exhibited more postural disturbance with increasing FOV. A surprisingly large increase in disturbance was found for the interval between 150/spl deg/ and 180/spl deg/ using the city scene. No statistically significant difference was found for effects of scene content. Two groups (postural stable group and postural unstable group) were identified during experiment. These groups performed differently in the two scene conditions. Future research plans are described.

Immersive virtual reality (VR) has proved to be potentially valuable as a pain control technique for patients with severe burns undergoing wound care and physical therapy. Recent studies have shown that single, 3-min visits to a virtual world can dramatically reduce the amount of pain experienced during wound care, and the illusion of going inside the computer-generated world helps make VR analgesia unusually effective. This case study explored whether VR continues to reduce pain when the duration and frequency of VR treatments are increased to more practical levels. A patient with deep flash burns covering 42% of his body spent varying amounts of time performing physical therapy with and without virtual reality. Five subjective pain ratings for each treatment condition served as the dependent measures. The magnitude of pain reduction with VR, and the patient's illusion of "going into" the virtual world did not diminish with repeated administration and longer treatment durations. Practical implications are discussed. The results of this study may be examined in more detail at www.hitl.washington.edu/projects/burn/.

1. ABSTRACT This paper describes a shared virtual world with four key goals: a reasonable economic model; low latency for world synchronization; a hospitable environment for users; and affordances for social interaction. The first goal is supported by examining economic issues related to the design of commercially viable 3D virtual environments including issues such as allowing use of currently developed Web based content. The second goal is supported by underlying network support that combines a mixed set of Internet protocols and a mixed model of a central server for universal resource management and multicast based transaction distribution. The final two goals are supported through architectural design patterns and a literature review of social issues and personal representation in virtual worlds.