ITP Pushes Boundaries in
Virtual Reality Techniques

By Richard Pierce

Thanks to an NYU Curricular Challenge Grant for research into low-cost virtual reality displays for classrooms, it won’t be long before students at the Institute of Fine Arts (IFA) will learn archeology while walking through a virtual city and School of Medicine students will be trained with a virtual patient.

The Tisch School’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) is well known for pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds, and now it’s in the lead in developing virtual reality techniques for the classroom. Last month, visitors to ITP’s Winter Show 2003 could not help but notice the large presence of virtual reality projects at this annual two-day exhibition. One entire room, designed by graduate students from Jean-Marc Gauthier’s “Poetics of Virtual Space” class, was given over to this work.

The technology used to create this virtual reality is a new, high-quality technique referred to as immersive environments, and it was created by Gauthier and Zach Rosen, 3D researcher resident at ITP. Gauthier’s work in immersive displays was inspired by old movies from Djiga Vertov and Abel Gance, which used split screens and multiple displays to create a new augmented reality. As a collector of old video cameras, Gauthier started designing several virtual cameras inside a virtual world that could allow viewers to see the same images on multiple screens. This exploration of the relationships between virtual spaces, video, and filmmaking is the topic of his forthcoming book to be published by Focal Press.

Recently, Gauthier has collaborated with NYU’s IFA and School of Medicine to use his immersive display techniques in the classroom. At the IFA, Gauthier and Christopher Ratte, associate professor of classics and fine arts, Faculty of Arts and Science, and co-director of excavations at Aphrodisias, Turkey, teamed up to create a new virtual-reality installation with the assistance of Haluk Goksel, an ITP alumnus, Philip Stinson, an IFA Ph.D. candidate, and Rosen.

“Virtual Archeology at Aphrodisias is an architectural model of the agora at Aphrodisias that is populated by a number of self-determined virtual characters,” says Ratte. “The installation differs from a conventional walk-though in the use of artificial intelligence to determine the movements of the figures and the camera, rather than programming them to follow set paths. The result is a closer approximation of a real spatial experience.”

At the School of Medicine, Gauthier’s ITP students are collaborating with their counterparts on a joint project called the Virtual Patient Dynamic Simulator. Martin Nachbar, associate professor of microbiology and medicine, Departments of Microbiology and Medicine, is the School of Medicine faculty member in charge.

“This joint project, using an interactive virtual-reality system, is designed for students and physicians alike to learn and practice procedures without the risk to patients,” says Nachbar. “It is a computer-based dynamic simulation providing educational content and tutorials about the body to be used extensively at all levels of medical education.”

More information about the people and the projects described in this text can be found online. Jean-Marc Gauthier-ITP’s projects are at www.itp.nyu.edu; the Aphrodisias excavation is at www.nyu.edu/projects/aphrodisias; and Martin Nachbar - Advanced Educational Systems projects are at www.endeavor.med.nyu.edu.

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