From: mikal@eskimo.celestial.com (Mikal Priess)
Subject: CULTURE: The real effect of _Lawnmower Man_ on the
Date: Thu, 28 May 92 13:56:54 PDT



My company, Matrix Northwest, displayed VR to the general public three
weeks ago and found that true information and hype up to and including
_Lawnmower Man_ have created an awareness and an excitement about
where this technology is going.  We displayed at the Puyallup
Spring Fair, a large county fair with a very good cross section
of the general public.

The system we demonstrated on a pay-per-view basis is built around
Sense8 software and used a Virtual Research Helmet with Logitech
ultrasonic head tracking.  The users walked through several different
worlds which were interconnected by "portals" that they had to
discover by themselves.

We had feared that _Lawnmower Man_ ,which had just played in Seattle,
would cause such high expectations that our system would be 
disappointing to the average person.  We were gratified to find that
MOST of the people who tried our demonstration had seen the movie
and that none of them expressed disappointment about the actual
experience of using VR equipment as it exists today.  Most of
the people expressed excitement about the possibilities of VR.
Everybody seemed to understand that _Lawnmower Man_ is "just
a movie" but that they were getting to experience "the real thing".

We were greatly encouraged in our work of developing and distributing
low cost VR systems to the amusement business.

    Mikal Priess      Matrix Northwest        206 448-8728