Virtual Reality, Art and Entertainment

Most existing research on virtual reality concerns issues close to the interface, primarily how to present an underlying simulated world in a convincing fashion. However, for virtual reality to achieve its promise as a rich and popular artistic form, as have the novel, cinema, and television, we believe it will be necessary to explore well beyond the interface, to those issues of content and style that have made traditional media so powerful. We present a case for the importance of this research, then outline several topics we believe are central to the inquiry: developing computational theories for cognitive/emotional agents, presentation style, and drama. 1 The Fantasy Machine A writer of popular science articles visits a laboratory to learn about the new \virtual reality" research. The writer is ushered into the demo room and warned to move slowly until adjusted to the system. The goggles slip on, then the dataglove, and a switch is thrown. As a world appears, the writer's head turns, and slowly the light of understanding dawns. Three months later the article appears. \I opened my eyes and had been transported in time and space. I could look around and almost feel things with my gloved hand, as if I were living in a di erent world. Hollywood watch out, soon VR will let us enter into our fantasies. We'll be able to go anywhere and do anything imaginable." The public is beginning to understand that virtual reality portends a new medium, new entertainment, a new and very powerful type of art. It has a Accepted to Presence, The Journal of Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, MIT Press, 1991. This is a revised version of \Deep Structure for Virtual Reality", Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science technical report CMU-CS-91-133.