From: stgprao@st.unocal.COM (Richard Ottolini)
Subject: APPS: VR to improve athletic performance
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1993 15:42:36 GMT
Message-ID: <1993Feb17.154236.9284@unocal.com>
Organization: Unocal Corporation



This week's NOVA episode on PBS is about using technology
to study and enhance athletic performance.
The USA bobsled team is simulating next year's Olympic
runs with a VR system.  Simultaneously, they compute
various physical parameters of a run in order to
reduce friction, energy expenditure, etc.
Just the TV screen image of the VR bobsled simulation
was realistic and scary to me :-)

On the same show was an "almost-VR" simulation of
sports movement- gynastics and track events.
Multiply positioned TV cameras and special sensor
dots on body joints capture full three movements
of special events.  These can be rendered in 3-D
*at any viewpoint* and with semi-realistic robotic
mannekins.  The arbitrary viewpoint feature is
important to athletes trying to understand winning
movements.  I call theis "almost-VR" because it
makes use of high quality interactive 3-D graphics,
however, the point is not to immerse the observer in
the simulation.