DigitalSpace SIGGRAPH 98 Emerging Technologies Digital Pavilion Proposal


The 21st Century Family Teleport
A new experience of cyberspace
A Digital Pavilion Proposed for SIGGRAPH 98, Orange County Convention Center
July 19-24, 1998


An experimental teleport featuring the VOCE produced by CyGaia and Phil Harrington at the avatars SIG at the SIGGRAPH 1997 headquarters hotel, Los Angeles


Contact and Team Information


Author/Contact: Bruce Damer, DigitalSpace Corporation, 343 Soquel Avenue, Suite 70, Santa Cruz CA 95062 USA
Phone: (831) 338 9400, home: (831) 338 0450, fax: (831) 338-9401
email: our Webmaster.

Collaboarators:



See the proposal online at: http://www.digitalspace.com/sig98/pavilion.htm.
Download the PDF version.
Enter a variety of inhabited online virtual worlds at the Avatar Teleport: http://www.digitalspace.com/avatars/





Your Guide to the SIGGRAPH Digital Pavilion Proposal

Short Description

Executive Overview

Team Information

Proposal: the 21st Century Family Teleport

Technical and Physical

See the Presentation
Addendum: CAL, SIGGRAPH TV and Sketches

SIGGRAPH 98 Digital Pavilions CFP


Short Description

How will we experience cyberspace in the 21st Century? Will the family room morph into a teleport with immersive big screens and sound where we will travel through virtual worlds and meet friends in our digital homesteads? We would like to know, so we plan to build one at SIGGRAPH 98 and find out!

Executive Overview

How will we experience cyberspace in the 21st Century? Will the TV screen simply get larger and will it morph together with the family PC? Or, will the family room become a kind of teleport, where everyone gathers to experience alternate realities? Visions of the family teleport come to us from fiction, such as Ray Bradbury's short story the Veldt to the holodecks of Star Trek. What will it look and feel like? To find out, we pulled together a team and their technologies to build a family teleport at SIGGRAPH 98. The world channel changer pilot will take visitors on a large screen immersive romp through virtual worlds hosted online, including: Douglas Adams as the hitchhiker's guide to cyberspace, friends and family spaces with voice powered avatars and talking photo albums, growing jungles, flights through your PC's CPU, and MTV's Tikkiland live in a virtual world.

Team Information

The team that is proposing this project has extensive experience in hosting installations and creating compelling content for conferences, including SIGGRAPH. The Contact Consortium and its special interest group, Biota.org, developed the Nerve Garden installation at last year's SIGGRAPH Electric Garden (see http://www.biota.org/nervegarden/index.html) which drew over 500 participants who germinated generative plants in a 3D cyberspace world projected on a large screen. Team members CyGaia produced a 3D avatar song experience called VOCE at the Digital Bayou in SIGGRAPH 96 and the Avatars SIG at SIGGRAPH 97 and at the Avatars conferences in 1996 and 1997, where they hosted a full teleport. Intel has extensive conference experience and systems capability in delivering the experience we plan to showcase in the family teleport. MTV and CyGaia have a strong interest and experience in hosting events both on their broadcast and virtual world cyberspace channel called Tikkiland. The Digital Village and Circle of Fire are excellent providers of content and high population online virtual worlds. DigitalSpace Corporation has worked with all of these partners in the past to provide overall coordination and event production. DigitalSpace has created and coordinated a number of international conferences on virtual worlds (please see http://www.digitalspace.com) and produced the Nerve Garden installation at last year's SIGGRAPH. A listing of team member companies, individuals and their web links is included below.



Proposal: The 21st Century Family Teleport

We propose to create a 21st Century family teleport, a rumpus-room sized area where through the use of innovative virtual worlds cast onto three rear projection screens, people entering will get the feeling they are within an alternate reality. In-person visitors to SIGGRAPH as well as virtual visitors from cyberspace will be able to participate in the teleport a number of ways. The first will be to just lurk, watching how others use the teleport. More active participants will operate the Teleport by manipulating a tried and true device: the familiar TV channel changer. Selecting from 3 or 4 channels, visitors will switch to different worlds instead of TV shows. Stopping at one world, a visitor could then use a number of interface devices to find out what the world offers. The channel changer pilot will switch between sources for each of the projectors. Each projector will be taking its source from multiple PCs. Virtual visitors to SIGGRAPH, from their PCs in Peoria and elsewhere, will be able to jack in to the teleport as avatar or video streamed participants. We will pre-arrange for a number of SIGGRAPH virtual staffers to join us in-world and help visitors at SIGGRAPH with their experience of virtual worlds in cyberspace.

A Friends and Family Experience in the Teleport

If the virtual world in the teleport presents a social communication space, like the 3D voice enabled world called Traveler, the visitors will speak into a microphone provided with the pilot station and talk to friends and family and other inhabitants who will be present in the virtual world from their home PCs outside of SIGGRAPH. If the virtual world presented is a navigable learning space, such as the Inside Intel Inside Family Computer Tour the visitor will use a joystick device to navigate their viewpoint around these worlds, triggering animation and voice narrative along the way. Nerve Garden II, a virtual terrarium, will give visitors lessons in natural processes as they plant the family terrarium. If the world is a VRML friends and family space, such as the family photo album room, floating 3D multi-resolution still or video images of family history will be navigated and audio stories triggered and streamed in by proximity. Compelling 3D creative and game play worlds like Active Worlds or Ultima Online will be navigated and interfaced with by keyboard and visitors will soon find themselves immersed in building structures or engaged in an online quest.

With one point of control and many points of observation, attention will focus, in that familiar family way, on getting control of the channel changer. Thus a center of interest will be created by the person controlling the worlds. In some cases, multiple worlds could appear on the screens, allowing simultaneous navigation or interaction by up to three users at the same time.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the new Cyberspace

Cues to new visitors will be given by an agent avatar embodying Douglas Adams, as the "hitchhiker's guide to cyberspace". This avatar will come up occasionally and provide verbal and gestural guidance to people piloting the Teleport.

Is there a Teleport in your Future?

What would be stressed to visitors throughout is that these experiences are being delivered live through the Internet and that the virtual participants are real people sitting at home, connected into the teleport via their PCs. Some of the virtual environments will be newly built for SIGGRAPH while others will be more familiar applications, seen in a larger view. If Teleports become a standard household appliance early in the next Century, we will all wonder how we could have experienced cyberspace in any other way.

Interaction: How attendees will interact with our display

Visitors will enter the Teleport room and watch the scenes projected on the walls or take hold of the channel changer, or navigational and interface devices to move through the virtual worlds and interact with scenes, agents and real people porting in as avatars or live video streams from all over the Internet. Visitors will engage in shared adventure quests, navigate through learning worlds, build their own 3D virtual homesteads, or communicate with friends and family in distant cyberspace worlds. The teleport room will accommodate 15 people at a time to permit us to do scheduled group exercises, such as the VOCE song experience in Traveler worlds or the cyberspace barn raising collaborative build in the Active Worlds environment.

Appearance: How the work will look/sound/feel

The installation will consist of a room, with a walk through from one end to the other past three 80 inch backlit screens arranged in a shallow D configuration. As attendees walk past the open end, they will see others within the room interacting with scenes or other people inside cyberspace worlds. The worlds will emanate generative or streaming music and voice. Live communicative worlds will feature people talking with their own voices through 3D avatars. The room will have the feel of a good old fashioned rumpus room only taken out into the 21st Century where it becomes a portal to reach the entire world through cyberspace. A greeter agent, in the form of author Douglas Adams, will invite visitors to take a hitchhiker's guide to cyberspace with him.

Impact: The cultural/technological/sociological impact of the work

The Home Teleport is designed to combine elements of 20th Century technology (the telephone, multi-user Internet worlds, 3D graphics, TV and still images) to create a novel 21st Century medium of communication, the shared virtual world in cyberspace. The virtual world is changing the notion of the Internet from an interface (Web documents) into that of a place (a visual world with objects and people visible as avatars). The sociological impact will come as people assign meaning, value and collective cultural memory to the people they meet and activities that occur inside the cognitive and visual spaces of these worlds. Currently some 400,000 Internet users frequent virtual worlds on the small screens of their home PCs. In the Home Teleport installation, these worlds will be experienced in an entirely new light. In addition, we hope that the teleport will give visitors a look at what they might find in their homes in the next century.

History: Creators of the project. Goals of the project. Target audience

The primary collaborators on this installation are Intel Corporation, the Contact Consortium, and DigitalSpace Corporation. Intel is a builder of CPUs, chipsets and whole systems designed to deliver increased performance in mass market PCs, workstations and other products. The Contact Consortium is a non-profit research and development membership organization dedicated to the medium of Internet-based virtual worlds. A special interest group of the Contact Consortium organized the Nerve Garden installation at last year's SIGGRAPH Electric Garden. DigitalSpace Corporation is a research and development organization working with the Consortium and Intel to produce the Teleport installation. Contributing content to the Teleport will be: Circle of Fire Studios, CyGaia/MTV's Tikkiland, The Digital Village and independent virtual environment designers. CyGaia produced a 3D avatar song experience called VOCE at the Digital Bayou in SIGGRAPH 96, at the Avatars SIG at SIGGRAPH 97 and at the Avatars conferences in 1996 and 1997, where they hosted a full teleport.

The goals of the project are to allow SIGGRAPH attendees to experience and experiment with a new way of seeing and interacting in cyberspace. Feedback from visitors at SIGGRAPH 98 could go a long way toward the design of a practical Home Teleport consumer appliance, appearing early in the 21st Century. The target audience is the ordinary home user of both TV and computers, who may have some familiarity with the Internet.

Technical and Physical

Equipment used to create the interactive display.

Some of 9 PCs will drive 3 projectors displaying live Internet-based virtual worlds and streaming media on three surfaces within the confines of the Teleport room. One PC will source sound and voice to 4 powered speakers. A remote control device, joystick or mouse, microphone and keyboard at a pilot station will allow visitors to select and interact with the worlds and people represented as avatars within them. Two other secondary workstations will allow shared interaction of three people in one world or three separate worlds. Other equipment will include:


Physical:


Presentation






Views of the Home Teleport Installation
Teleport Design and Images by CyGaia


Other credits (mentors, collaborators, sponsors)

We would like to thank Karen Marcelo, Przemek Prusinkiewicz and the whole Biota.org team for providing the basis for Nerve Garden, Mark Pesce, Tony Parisi, and Mitra for their contributions in bringing us VRML 2.0, Kevin George and Phil Harrington for VOCE and Steve DiPaola/Kevin George for

Traveler, Ron Britvich, Rick Noll and the whole Circle of Fire Team for providing the first large scale 3D cyberspace worlds, and finally Demetri Terzopoulos, Karl Sims, Larry Yaeger and others for proving that biological metaphors can yield a compelling cyberspace.

Dimensions of work (Floor space required)

The installation can be comfortably placed in an area 30 feet on the side. If necessary, this area can be reduced to 25 feet on the side.

The duration of the user experience

Each user could be expected to pick up the essentials and be participating in the teleport in particular worlds with a minute. Thereafter, 5 to 7 minutes would be needed for a full experience of a particular world. While one visitor is piloting or interacting in the world, other visitors can be watching, even standing within the teleport in front of the pilot user. If the world can be inhabited by more than one user, two more can join in at the other workstations and engaged in shared building or other collaborative exercises. Virtual attendees from outside SIGGRAPH or the CAL could jack in to the teleport and communicate with visitors there. When we have a scheduled event, such as the VOCE song or the cyber barn raisings, these will last for about 30 minutes. A daily schedule of events will be posted at both entrances to the teleport.

Hardware used

The hardware used will include:

Sofware used

The software to be used will include:

Estimated shipping costs

Much of the equipment will come as part of other exhibit floor installations, but we estimate these costs to be approximately $12,000

Supplies and people we will need during the conference to set up and run the project

We will have the following people on staff:

We will supply a paper handout describing the concept of the family teleport and how it ties into 25 years past and future, of computer graphics, networking and design. We will also supply a survey form to gather data on if people feel that they would like a teleport like this in their homes in the 21st Century.

Other supplies we will need (and will provide)

The number of people who will be able to participate in the project and crowd control measures

We estimate 15 people at a time, 100 per hour and 700-800 per day, as there is ample opportunity to wander through, lurk and move on through the other end of the installation. As far as active drivers of the teleport, we estimate we could accommodate 20 people per hour (three at a time, one at each workstation P1, W1, W2) in hands-on experiences while the rest watch. Adequate provision for a queuing mechanism will be taken. Two guides will be roving between workstations to help participants with questions and shepherd them into the experience of the different worlds in the teleport.

Floor plans or drawings indicating space design and utilities required


Overhead view of the installation

The figure above shows an overhead view of the installation, which is between 25 and 30 feet square. We plan to drape the ceiling of the booth to provide more intimacy and help control light levels. Traffic can flow in and out of two entrances and we can pool up to 15 people within the teleport.

Legend

Entrances E1 and E2: There will be two ways to enter the booth, to permit flow through traffic. Entryways will be 5 to 8 feet wide to promote the intimacy of the installation and help control light level.

Screens: Three 80 inch portable screens will be lit by lightweight rear projectors. They will be arranged together in a shallow D-shape to give visitors the feeling of immersion.

PCs: Up to 9 PCs, including our server, will be set up behind the screens in the Support Area and out of the way of visitors.

Projectors: 3 110Volt lightweight projectors behind the screens.

P1: pilot workstation with master channel changer. Can be operated by staff or visitor to the booth.

W1, W2: Workstations allowing two other people to join into multi user activities.

M1, M2: External monitors bringing some of the interior activity to passers-by.

Sound: Sound will be driven through four powered speakers connected to PCs. Sound levels will be kept down and speakers directed to the interior of the installation.

Power: 110V outlets (30) should be sufficient for all workstations, monitors, devices and lighting. If fewer number of power drops is possible than shown here, we can run extensions.

Phone: position of telephone in booth.

Back Wall: this surface may be covered in mirrors to give the teleport an added dimension.

Networking: We will provide a hub and all cabling to connect up to 9 PCs, through one server, to the SIGGRAPH network. We may run some of the applications on another local network we set up. Diagram shows drop point for networking.

Miscellany: Furniture, lighting and the tables for the interface devices, will be arranged as shown in the diagram.

Estimated set-up and strike time

We estimate a set up time of 5 hours and a strike and cartage time of no more than 2 hours.

Addendum: Support of the Creative Applications Laboratory, SIGGRAPH TV and Sketches

Elements of the Family Teleport could also be made available in the Creative Applications Laboratory. Visitors to the CAL and the digital pavilion could interact in common virtual worlds installed in both locations and connected via the general Internet. In addition, we would be please to support SIGGRAPH TV and present portions of this work in a Sketches session.

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