toledoblade.com --

BOWLING GREEN - Imagine class field trips where students can walk through the rain forest, peer down into the Grand Canyon, or climb up the Statue of Liberty - without leaving school grounds.

That might soon be possible with a program called Pocket Virtual Worlds.

It works similar to the display of a global position system, or GPS, that shows where a person moves on a map.

But this program, created by faculty and students at Bowling Green State University and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, takes it a step further.

It allows the user to walk inside buildings and see their surroundings change as they physically move.

"It gives you the sensation you're there and walking around in that place," said Larry Hatch, a professor of visual communications and technology at BGSU and leader of the Digital Media Research Group.

The program is still in the prototype phase as the group continues to improve its methods of gathering information and mathematically applying it to the computer program.

The process is an involved one.

The researchers are currently working with 239 photographs taken about a year ago at the Alamo battle shrine in San Antonio by Mr. Hatch and his partner on the project, Jared Bendis, creative director of new media at Case Western.

Essentially, they set up a camera on a tripod that faces straight up and takes photos into a mirrored, three-dimensional, upside-down cone.

That results in a circular photograph that appears distorted until it is unwrapped into a panoramic picture.

Researchers then take those photographs and connect them in a sequence of paths plugged into a computer program so that the images change as the user's direction changes.

"We had 20 to 25 people surrounding us when we were taking pictures.

They were wondering what in the world we were doing," Mr. Hatch said.

They chose to take photos of the Alamo while they were there for a conference because it is a nationally known site and a place that not everyone has the opportunity to visit. Mr. Bendis said that it was a good place to start.

"It's really hard to show people the 'wow factor' if you show them the building you work in," Mr. Bendis said.

The group intends to advance the program into an interactive learning gaming system.

"We lock them into a desk all day and they don't like it," Mr. Hatch said of a normal school day.

Students, for example fourth-graders, could use the handheld device to walk through the Amazon and answer questions every few steps about what they see around them.

Think of Scholastic's popular Magic School Bus, which shrinks students and takes them into the human body or a hurricane - it would be somewhat like that.

The program can use photographs or digitally created images, so students could also travel the universe or into history.

"It takes your empty room and turns it into what's in the PDA," Mr. Bendis said.

The group is using PDAs as a display unit, but the goal is to have a company interested in the software create a handheld device like the Nintendo DS.

And like switching games to play, you could switch virtual worlds in the same device, Mr. Hatch said.

There's really nothing out there like this technology, he said.

There are handheld electronic devices, virtual reality games tethered to computers or televisions, and the Nintendo Wii game that incorporates the user's motion - but Pocket Virtual Worlds puts all those ideas together.

And it's better than virtual realty helmets that are expensive, unsafe because you can't see where you're walking, and cause extra strain on the eyes, said Jason Mellen, a virtual communication and technology senior and a member of the group.

Mr. Hatch says that they hope to perfect Pocket Virtual Worlds and have it ready for corporate consideration in about a year.

To do that, Mr. Hatch and four students in the Digital Media Research Group are heading to Austria to tweak the program at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.

The university has a facility built in 2005 with a lab of up-to-date equipment and people conducting similar research, Mr. Hatch said.

Mr. Hatch is leaving Wednesday on a faculty-improvement leave, and the students will be there before the fall semester in Salzburg starts in mid-September.

Three of the students plan to stay for two semesters, and one is staying for only the fall semester.

The students are Mr. Mellen and Brian King, who are both scheduled to graduate in August and are planning to start a graduate program in similar studies, and Alex Mach and Eric Gang, who just completed their sophomore years at BGSU.

The students said they have been overwhelmed with the opportunities working on Pocket Virtual Worlds has allowed them.

It's not just studying abroad in Europe, but experiencing first-hand what they are learning in the classroom, Mr. Gang said.

"It's really opened the doors to thinking about the innovative sides and the future of technology," he said.

"When I came here I didn't know how to do a lot of stuff I do now," added Mr. King.

"It's taking what's out there and learning you can build on it and do crazy things to change it."

Contact Meghan Gilbert at:
mgilbert@theblade.com
or 419-724-6134.

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