This Virtual View Of Reality Is But A Journey Just Begun
The Age
Tuesday July 13, 1999
VICTORIA'S most famous eyebrows, those of the Treasurer and Minister for Multimedia Alan Stockdale, lay hidden beneath some 3D spectacles. The Minister was watching a full-color image, pumped out of a small super-computer, through three big digital projectors, of Collins Street, complete with trams.
That was reality, presented virtually. Next, on the big semi-circular screen, came a similarly life-like 3D view of a project still mostly on architects' drawing boards - the Commonwealth Technology Port in Melbourne's Docklands precinct. And, from the security of their chairs within RMIT's virtual reality centre on Victoria Street, they ``flew" around it as if in a magic helicopter, passing around, through and even under buildings yet to be completely designed.
This was an exclusive group including the Minister, the vice-chancellor of RMIT, Professor David Beanland, and the chief executive of Melbourne's Docklands Authority, John Tabart. And they were watching the work of a Silicon Graphics Onyx2 computer of awesome power.
The machine has eight microprocessors running at just under 200MHz, has more than a gigabyte of DRAM, 75Gb of hard disk space and the ability to draw 33 million polygons a second.
It pumps data into three RGB projectors mounted in the centre's ceiling, which create the 3D images on a semicircular screen about 2.5 metres high and five metres across.
It was all happening last week in RMIT's new Virtual Reality Centre on Victoria Street, Melbourne, an enterprise that has already attracted considerable commercial interest.
``We are now writing proposals for several companies," said Gary Eves, manager of the RMIT centre. Eves, an Englishman, works for Silicon Graphics, which is in partnership with RMIT in what is the first commercial virtual-reality design centre of its kind in Australia. The establishment represents a $3million investment.
Soon, though, several other such centres will be established, also using Silicon Graphics computers of a kind famed for their massive rendering work in the production of films such as Jurassic Park and Star Wars, Episode One: The Phantom Menace. One centre, due to go into Sydney later this year, will cost $10million.
Virtual reality provided a most powerful tool to the designers of almost anything, from huge building complexes such as the Commonwealth Technology Port site at Melbourne Docklands, through airliners, cars, even down to a simple ballpoint pen.
Before VR, said Eves, computer simulations provided information in numeric form, which was usually very difficult to interpret. Virtual reality allowed designers to ``fly" around their projects and see it as it would be in real life.
That, he said, gave a perspective and an insight of great value. Costly mistakes could be avoided and alterations made before large sums had been spent; less than 1 per cent of conventional costs, he said.
Michael Hopkins, Asia Pacific projects manager for Silicon Graphics, said the RMIT centre could be converted in moments from simulating a car to giving the view from a helicopter; from simulating a theme park ride to rehearsing surgery on a human brain.
As a teaching aid, said Eves, the virtual reality centre offered great advantages. Students at RMIT, while they would not be closely involved in the centre's commercial projects, would none the less be exposed to the pressures of real life in the industrial world and thus be better prepared to make their way in it.
© 1999 The Age