Menagerie is a Virtual Environment installation by Michael Girard, Susan Amkraut, Mark Trayle, and Scott Fisher commissioned for the exhibition "Revue Virtuelle" at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France. This virtual is inhabited by virtual characters and presences specially designed to respond to and interact with its users. The experience allows a visitor to become visually and aurally immersed in a 3D computer generated environment that is inhabited by many virtual animals. The animals enter and exit the space through portholes and doors that materialize and dematerialize around the viewer. As a user explores the virtual space, they encounter several species of computer-generated animals, birds, and insects that move about independently, and interactively respond to the users presence in various ways. For example, if the user moves towards a group of birds gathered on the ground, they might take off and swirl around the user with realistic flocking behavior, fly off into the distance, and return to the ground in another location. Several four-legged animals will approach the user with different gaits and behavioral reactions. The visitor might also turn toward the 3D localized sound of other animals as they follow from behind.

The interface to this virtual world is a telepresence display device called the BOOM (Binocular Omni-Orientational Monitor) and is referred to as a 'head-coupled' display. The BOOM is a counterbalanced CRT-based stereoscopic viewing device that enables interactive, real-time viewpoint control in a 3D environment generated by computer or camera. This process is very similar to using a pair of binoculars that provide a movable, wide-angle window into the virtual space. The BOOM incorporates very wide field-of-view optics and two independent CRT displays packaged together as an integrated viewing head with user handgrips and buttons for viewpoint manipulation. In addition to the interface advantages of the BOOM, it uses mechanical tracking technology to overcome many of the limitations associated with magnetic trackers. As a result, images presented on the BOOM are typically more stable and respond more quickly than on head-mounted systems.

  VirtualExperienceDesign-SPIE1995.pdf

Menagerie demo Quicktime movie (9.2MB)