From: GBNEWBY@VMD.CSO.UIUC.EDU
Subject: CULTURE: Cyberzone, first virtual reality TV game show on BBC2
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 12:30:45 CST



Viewers of British T.V. may have seen TV history last Monday when the
first ever Virtual Reality game show screened on BBC2 (about 6:50 pm).

Entitled 'CyberZone', the show consisted of three parts in which two
teams of two played against each other in various settings.

For the first two games, one team was set an objective or series of
tests which were contained in various 3-d rooms.  They received one
point for each room/test completed and then moved on to another one.
The other team was meanwhile attempting to block their progress.

The team doing the challanges was divided into one 'runner' who would
run on a pressure sensitive pad in order to move his perspective
forward while using a turntable to rotate his direction through 360
degrees.  The other player could see an overall view of the room and
the scenario and was able to direct the runner where to go.  The
runner's viewpoint was displayed on a large video wall in front of him
while the other player had straight-forward TV monitors to view.

The team attempting to obstruct the player were encased in a seperate
'buggy'-like vehicle which was basically an arcade game console.

The scenario in all of the three games played consisted of a castle or
similar type building layout.  The players ran from room to room
trying to solve the puzzles and progress to another room and pick up
another point.

Each team played the challange and the final game was a head-to-head
where they both had to escape from the same building.  In this last
game both teams were on the'runner' equipment simultaneously.

The show lasted about half an hour during which the viewer was shown
the computer action from all sorts of viewpoints within each room.
The players were represented as computer figures in these views.

All the graphics were designed by Dimension International and
basically the whole thing was a walk-through environment rather than
immersion HMD-like stuff.  There was also no way for the player to
change their perspective other than to turn their figure around.

The graphics were extremely slow (i.e. usual VR standard!!) and very
far from real time.  Hence I found the show to be quite dull as it
took so long for anybody to actually DO anything!

There was plenty of futuristic sets and terms but the whole thing
lacked speed and content and certainly did not sum up to compulsive
viewing.

Next weeks episode will feature all-women teams.


Mark Henry.
Research Postgrad, University College Dublin, Ireland.