“Mandala: Virtual Village” by Vincent

The Mandala system, produced by the Vivid Group of Toronto has established a unique position in the virtual reality/multimedia field since its release in 1989. Using a camera-based interface, the system allows the user to interact with graphic images within video worlds, completely unencumbered by goggles, gloves, or other tracking devices. Through “video gesture” the user can manipulate animated graphics to trigger various events–graphic, gravitational, audio, or sequenced. The Mandala system is presently being used by corporate and private clients around the globe, in applications ranging from performance and presentation to education and communications.

The Mandala Virtual Village is an urban design application allowing two locations to mutually plan the development of a 360° panoramic virtual environment. It is based on an existing multimedia learning resource kit developed for an international cultural exchange project between junior high and secondary school students in Canada, the U.S., and Italy.

This exhibit has been adapted for the tomorrow’s realities gallery at SIGGRAPH 93 from the “Virtual Cities” regional discovery project, which is an integrated multimedia learning program produced by the National Film Board of Canada in collaboration with The Vivid Group. Designed to provide young people with the means to explore the elements of their urban environments with their peers from other countries, the program linked three international classrooms to exchange multimedia data including still and motion pictures of their environments. These images were ultimately used when the students linked-up in a “video conference” via satellite, to plan their ideal urban environments together.

The Virtual Cities project was designed to establish a network of young people in a number of countries to investigate the environmental and social effects of accelerating urbanization, and the need to develop strategies for sustainable cities that include the concerns of local populations.

The Mandala Virtual Village allows two remote sites in the SIGGRAPH 93 tomorrow’s realities gallery to link up in a virtual world where the participants can plan the development of a 360° panoramic environment together, through the placement of 24-bit full color graphic images. Another challenge the users face is the “greening” of a virtual desert.

Hardware
■ 2 video projection systems (suggested Sony VPH-1042O)
■ 2 minimum 26″ monitors (33″ preferred)
■ NTSC output
or ..
■ 4 minimum 26″ monitors (33″ preferred) NTSC output
■ Mandala VR system and software to be provided by The Vivid Group