Catching the reality wave

By ADAM GIFFORD

The nausea kicks in just after the Saab fighter jet stops arcing over the Swedish countryside and spirals towards the horizon.

I close my eyes, as I'm advised to do when the inner ear loses track of what the eyes are trying to tell the brain, and open them just as the roller coaster plunges off the edge of the canyon towards the futuristic cityscape below.

This is virtual reality that feels all too real.

The images I see are projected on to a semicircular wall by a SGI Onyx 3000 graphics super computer at the Queensland Manufacturing Institute at Eight Mile Plains, south of Brisbane.

More than 15 such reality centres are now set up across Australia - the exact number cannot be revealed because some are in military establishments.

So far, no one on this side of the Tasman has come up with the $2 million to $3 million required, but efforts are under way in Auckland and Wellington to prove the demand exists.

Much of the QMI centre's $2 million-plus price tag was picked up by the Queensland Government as part of its "smart state" policy. SGI also injected more than $1 million in products and services.

The QMI, a not-for-profit company, finances the operating costs by getting companies and organisations in Queensland and further afield to rent time at the centre.

The Government was swayed by arguments that visualisation can save on average 5 per cent on the cost of big projects.

QMI centre manager Nelson Frolund said that because the centre was not trying to recover the capital cost, it could charge out for about $A1000 a day.

That was low enough to encourage organisations to try out the technology, the main aim of the centre, which had also pioneered the use of new casting technologies and ultra high-pressure water-jet cutting and cleaning systems.

"When the market picks up on a technology, we can get out of it," Mr Frolund said.

The oil and gas industry, which can quickly recover the cost by drilling far fewer dry wells, and the automotive industry, which can save millions on physical modelling and testing, have enthusiastically embraced reality centres.

The military uses them for flight training, battlefield simulation and command and control exercises.

The SGI managing director for New Zealand and Australia, Bill Trestrail, said the new generation SGI-powered flight simulators were already proving their worth in Afghanistan.

"The whole country is mapped down to two-metre definition," he said.

"Before they fly a bombing mission, the pilots have already flown the route in a simulator."

The New Zealand defence force has so far not shown any interest, in spite of visualisation's potential in procurement.

Rather than relying on a time-consuming, paper-based and ultimately unsatisfying process to buy its controversial light armoured vehicles, the Army could have modelled the various contenders to measure their strengths and weaknesses.

Auckland University's technology development company Uniserve is trying to pull together interested parties to get a centre built here.

IT business development officer Robin Ducker said the university already had an Onyx in its biomedical department, and for a further $1.2 million or so could add the graphics, pipes, projectors and building required for a reality centre.

"We're looking to see how many clients we can get on a commercial basis to aggregate demand and make it viable," he said.

Local government could be a big user. The first paid project at the QMI is modelling a Brisbane motorway bypass.

"Local government can be a big winner because visualisation is a useful tool to understand the environmental impacts and it can also meet the needs of community consultation," Mr Ducker said.

SGI New Zealand regional manager Scott Houston said two groups were jockeying to get the first reality centre here. The Auckland University group was one and the other was centred around the Wellington Media Lab.

The Wellington Media Lab is trying to create a virtual company of universities, government, industry, business and communications companies.

Research manager Michael Gregg said a reality centre was crucial to any such laboratory.

"It is important New Zealand has one because of its value as a vehicle for interdisciplinary collaboration," he said.

"The key challenge to making it work is to break down the constraints of the academic and industry interface."

* Adam Gifford visited the the Queensland Manufacturing Institute as a guest of SGI.