millimeter

the magazine of motion picture and television production

December 1992    •   7.00    •   A Penton Publication

Neurologists Fight Surgeons in Virtual Reality

Corporate communication isn't as buttoned-down as it used to be. New technologies like virtual reality mean some meetings are more like a visit to the local arcade. A recent video-game-styled battle between physicians in Anaheim and New Orleans produced by Manhattan-based Corporate Communications Group illustrates how people can reach out over phone lines and touch databases either to compete or to cooperate.

The MDs in question were playing Microbe Battler, a game created by CCG for the company's REALWare video-wall VR system. Players at the American College of Surgeons were captured by a video camera and chromakeyed into a 3-D graphic environment projected on a video wall in front of them. They wore cotton gloves colored to contrast with their clothing for easier tracking by a 486-based computer, processing in real time. The object of the game is to hurl computer-generated balls (representing the drug) at microbes that fly into view on a three by three Pioneer Projection Cube Wall. While CCG has done VR before, this is the company's first foray into pitting players in different cities against each other via satellite and T3 fiber-optic lines. The video traveled over 2,000 miles through the Vyvx transmission system; two-way audio and data feeds completed the link.

"You can't use the 'G-word' game in the pharmaceutical profession," says Phil Di Pietro, CCG's director of marketing. "But that's what it is—a gamelike VR system." As in any other video game the winner is the one who wipes out the most enemy objects, in this case, microbes that cause infection.

Other more formal applications, Di Pietro points out, might include a stand-up presentation where the speaker is chromakeyed into a virtual background and is able to open windows with a colored pointer to bring forth other images. But the idea Di Pietro seems to like best is virtual racketball between opponents at health clubs in different cities.

CCG, which started business in 1985 as a traditional film and video production house, has its own in-house R&D gunning at "making information more accessible in new and different ways," Di Pietro says.

Alison Johns