We've come along way since subLogic released its 1984 Flight Simulator for the Commodore 64. A decade later Multi-user dungeons (MUDs) were springing up all over the Internet, creating virtual environments through the interaction of the participants. And by the early nineties the first virtual reality masks were appearing in arcades, offering games environments not unlike the set of the 1982 Disney science-fiction movie Tron.

However, the games industry was not the only place where virtual environments were capturing the imagination of developers.

In an effort to stay at the cutting edge of geo-scientific software Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) began looking to develop the next generation of 3D and 4D software for the interpretation of geoscientific data in the early 1990s. Mid-way though the decade the institution had settled on virtual environments as those with the "greatest potential" in this area.

By 1998 a combination of their work in this area had produced the hapto-visual workbench and proof-of-concept software which allowed users to catch satellites at the end of a virtual elastic string and swing them around a gently rotating 3D virtual planet Earth. What continues to amaze newcomers to CSIRO's satellite hapto-visual workbench - which provides a tactile and visual interface with computer software - is the feedback provided through the haptic arm actually feels "so realistic it's creepy".

In 1999 the Powerhouse museum in Sydney installed "The Wedge", an interactive display which enables visitors to don the stereoscopic glasses and control an 3D depiction of mathematical models with a range of topographies and colour schemes. With the help of a joystick the image can be moved through three dimensions - apparently floating through the air, and growing as it approaches the viewers. While The Wedge is by no means the most sophisticated interactive virtual reality environment on offer, it manages to emulate effects achieved using multimillion-dollar software and hardware systems, using high end PCs and software written from scratch at the Australian National University (ANU).

Drew Whitehouse, head of the ANU-based supercomputer cell Vizlab, worked on the pSpace software which runs The Wedge and to this day continues to develop interactive virtual reality software. His most recent installation, kSpace, at the National Museum of Australia features a 10-minute interactive exhibition which allows visitors of all ages to design a city of the future.

By November 2001 the New York Hall of Sciences, was using interactive haptic technology to pit tug-of-war teams of school kids against each other, measuring their "pull" using voltage, and sending it down the Internet to an opposing team located streets away.

2002 saw the further refinement of CSIRO's hapto-visual workbench, enabling users experience a range of textures like rough, spongy or sticky. In turn this technology has formed the basis of an interactive software suite that will ultimately enable hands-on medical training to be conducted in a virtual environment over the Internet.

While it makes a temporary home at the CSIRO TIP (Telecommunications and Industrial Physics) in Sydney, the hapto-visual workbench tours the country in the back of Dr Tony Adriaansen's car. The workbench continues to provide a platform to trial software which will one day provide a fully interactive surgery training suite. Users can try their hand at removing a virtual gall bladder, under the close but remote supervision and guidance of Chris Gunn at CSIRO's Mathematical and Information Sciences based in Canberra.

The different haptic textures created by the CSIRO enable the technology to capture the feel and resistance of different organs, and will gradually increase in terms of sophistication until it emulates a broad range of surgical procedures. Seated at a similar hapto-visual workbench Gunn is able to guide a trainee through the 3D space, circling, pointing to or highlighting areas of interest. He can even take control of the trainee's haptic wand remotely - effectively guiding their hand through the 3D environment.

But this is only one of a range of applications Adriaansen and Gunn foresee for their creation.

"When we are looking at collaborative virtual environments, the other party does not necessarily have to be human," Adriaansen says. "In the mining sector for example we can envisage multiple parties working within the same three dimensional space, where the computer is guiding the users as to where for example, it is safest to build a mine road, based on geological data".

Virtual environments hit the main stream

While high-end researchers are looking at ways to integrate 3D visual effects and haptic technology into virtual environments, Web based collaborative software, from multi-player games to corporate software suites are making their presence felt online.

Packages such as IBM's Lotus Sametime, which has chalked up seven million users worldwide, take real-time messaging into a range of applications, including real-time e-meetings, and multi-user interactive presentations based on Microsoft Powerpoint files. The most sophisticated software currently in use is integrated Web services information provision and translation software enabling multi-lingual groups to participate in the same virtual meeting.

Not shy of "eating its own dog-food" IBM claims to save US$4 million per month conducting 8000 e-meetings using the Lotus Sametime suite. With a quarter of a million company based users, the package connects upwards of 80,000 users at any given time.

"The finance and banking sectors have been the early adopters at this stage," explains Lotus software market manager for IBM Australia Lisa Kinter. "It is also used by major security organisations such as the FBI, CIA as well as Naval fleets around the world because all the messages are protected by strong encryption."

In the corporate sector similar suites are also increasingly used as the basis for online education suites and virtual classrooms.

Meanwhile Forrester Research predicts that by 2005 nearly 50 million households in the US will be logged onto multiple real-time games, with hardware revenues topping US$9.4 billion by 2005 while software and content revenue reaches US$16.9 billion.

Multi-player features initially designed for the LAN environment have seen millions of people all over the world log onto games such as Doom, Counterstrike, Command and Conquer, and Quake.

Vizlab's Whitehouse says the games industry has always been at the forefront of software development of multi-users virtual environments.

"The games industry is really driving the whole industry, from the drivers to the graphics," Whitehouse says. "A lot of big graphics companies used to make a lot of money selling high-end machines."

However, the fast and furious nature of the games industry will also provide a steady talent stream into other areas of shared virtual environment development.

"In some ways shared virtual environments in other sectors are overshadowed by the glamour industries of graphics for film and games," Whitehouse says. "But the people who will work creating virtual environments into other areas are often those that are burnt out from spending time in the games industry."

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