“‘Pocket’ Virtual Worlds – Get off your chair and explore them!” by Bendis and Hatch

When you think of exploring virtual worlds, you tend to think of yourself sitting in front of a monitor and navigating through them with a keyboard, mouse, or joystick. The one thing that these worlds tend to lack is a physical sense of space; you are just sitting in a chair in front of a desk. What you need is a virtual world in your pocket that you can stand up and take with you.  PocketPCs afford the perfect opportunity to allow you to explore a ‘pocket’ virtual world. The size of the unit makes the experience personal and portable. If you think about a panorama as an immersive point in space – then a virtual world might be an array of navigable panoramas. And while rendering on a handheld might not seem possible – memory has become so small in size, large in capacity, and inexpensive that pre-rendering hundreds (if not thousands) of views could in fact be practical. These views could be CG or photographic. Of course you still are sitting on your chair with a handheld so we have to take it to the next level.