Bernard Frischer, UCLA (frischer@ucla.edu )

Franco Niccolucci, University of Florence (niccolucci@unifi.it)

Nick Ryan, University of Kent at Canterbury (N.S.Ryan@ukc.ac.uk )

Juan Barcelò, University of Barcelona (ilphd@blues.uab.es)

**From CVR to CVRO:**

**The Past, Present, and Future of Cultural Virtual Reality.**

**Abstract**

The authors first sketch the development of cultural virtual reality
(CVR) within the overall context of the development of computing since
the 1940s. After establishing the nature and ubiquity of virtual reality
systems, especially in the 1990s, and predicting their further spread in
the coming decade, they argue that the time is ripe for the creation of
a new professional association devoted to the computer modeling of
cultural heritage sites. The proposed association will be called CVRO
(or, \"Cultural Virtual Reality Organization\")\--a play on the Latin
word *curo* (\"I care for;\" cf. English \"curate\"). It will be open to
professors, students, and professionals actively engaged in the theory
and practice of cultural virtual reality\--the content developers of
CVR. The goals of CVRO will include: defining and defending the
interests of its members; holding an annual meeting for the exchange of
information; hosting a Web site; and developing aesthetic, scientific,
and technical standards for cultural virtual reality models. Readers
wishing to join CVRO are asked to contact one of the co-authors.

**1. Introduction**

> \"If the ten-year rule of thumb holds true, personal computer
> enthusiasts by the millions a decade from now will be interacting
> directly with virtual worlds through their desktop reality engines.\"
>
> \--Howard Rheingold (1991)
>
> \"All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the
> delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness
> they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of
> sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not
> going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything
> else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know
> and brings to light many differences between things.\"
>
> \--Aristotle, *Metaphysics* 980a (ca. 330 B.C.)

Howard Rheingold\'s ten-year rule worked. Now, almost ten years after he
published his prediction, millions of personal computer enthusiasts are
interacting with virtual worlds through desktop 3D engines. But, with a
few notable exceptions, the virtual worlds they are visiting in the
computer games they play and on the Web sites they visit are generally
the creations of anonymous digital graphic artists and make no claim to
scientific accuracy or authenticity. Now, indeed, we can make a new
prediction: after another cycle of the ten-year rule, by the year 2011
hundreds of millions of personal computer enthusiasts will be
interacting with hundreds of thousands of virtual worlds on a variety of
devices in their homes, schools, and offices. What will these worlds be?
Most will undoubtedly be a great deal more photorealistic than today\'s
average 3D computer model, but most will also almost certainly be no
less fanciful. Humanity\'s appetite for new entertainments and
spectacles is unquenchable and probably far exceeds its more sober
curiosity for visualizations of scientific models of natural and
man-made objects. In a recent futuristic issue of *Time* magazine
devoted to \"The Future of Technology,\" Ray Kurzweil predicts that
virtual reality will be used to offer \"any type of experience with
anyone\--business, social, romantic, sexual\--without having to be in
the same place\" (Kurzweil 2000, p. 83). Nevertheless, since \"all men
by nature desire to know,\" and, as in Aristotle\'s day, learn best
through seeing, we can predict that, in comparison with the last ten
years, many more of the new virtual worlds waiting to be born in the
next 10-year cycle will be scientific, i.e., accurate digital
representations of the object they purport to model as authenticated by
experts.

As scholars active in the field of cultural heritage, it is naturally
computer models of cultural heritage sites (i.e., CVR) that interest us.
Digital reconstructions of archaeological sites, digital restorations of
existing buildings showing them in their earliest phase, computer
recreations of entire cities as they appeared at earlier stages in their
history: all these are examples of virtual worlds that have been created
in the past decade and that will be created in even greater numbers
during the second ten-year cycle that is just beginning. We write this
article because we are concerned that as the pace of virtual world
creation picks up, the opportunity not be lost to ensure that at least
some small portion of the new models are scientific in the sense defined
above. We also write because we think that now is the right moment to
pause and reflect on what it will take to maximize the number of
scientific models that will be created and consumed in the years ahead.
As will be seen, we think that, in view of the impressive groundwork of
hardware and software already laid, the answer we seek is more
theoretical and sociological than it is technological. The bad news may
be the weakness of human nature, but the good news is that CVR content
developers can themselves take some obvious steps\--taken many times by
practitioners of other professions\--and become to no small extent the
masters of their own fate.

It has taken a long time for computing to reach the point where
authenticated, photorealistic models of the world\'s cultural heritage
sites have been possible and economical. It is the thesis of this paper
that what we call \"cultural virtual reality\" (CVR) has now come of
age. The technological and theoretical preconditions for CVR had been
laid by 1990. The 1990s witnessed the efforts of a few pioneers who
seized the moment and commenced the practice of CVR. In this paper, we
review the \"prehistory\" of CVR and argue that it is now important for
CVR developers to found a professional organization that will represent
their interests; give them a forum for sharing new ideas and projects;
communicate with each other; provide a clearinghouse for their CVR
models that third parties can license; and, most important of all,
provide a structure through which new technical, aesthetic, and
scientific standards can be defined and implemented.

**2. Background. The Prehistory of CVR**

As is well known, the progress of computing since World War II has been
based on a number of favorable and related developments: the steady
decrease in the cost and size of computer power, memory, and other key
hardware components; the gradual increase in the number of components
that can be put onto a single integrated circuit; the relentless
acceleration of computational speed of central processing units; etc.
Thus, ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), an early
computer built from 1943-1946 at the University of Pennsylvania by John
W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, Jr., occupied a room that was about 10
x 15 meters in size; ENIAC could only perform 15 to 50 additions per
second.[^1] In 1996, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of ENIAC,
computer science students at the same university built a single computer
chip, 7.44 mm. by 5.29 mm, using a 0.5 micrometer CMOS technology, that
had the same architecture and power as the original ENIAC.[^2] The chip
was less than 1/3800^th^ the size of the original machine. Meanwhile, by
the same year, the frequency of a typical PC microprocessor had reached
200 million instructions per second.[^3] Also in 1996, the United States
Department of Energy\'s Sandia National Laboratory and Intel Corporation
created a parallel supercomputer that operated at 1.06 teraflops (1.06
trillion instructions per second). By 2000, IBM had created a
supercomputer operating at 12.3 teraflops,[^4] Personal computer
performance had speeded up even more by 2000, reaching frequencies as
high as 5.5 gigaflops.[^5]

ENIAC was built to generate ballistic tables for the US Army.[^6] The
original applications of computing power were military, and throughout
the history of the postwar era, US military investment has driven
breakthroughs in hardware, software, and in the very conception of how
the computer might be used. Thus, Thomas Watson, Sr. the founder and
President of IBM, resisted his son\'s efforts in the 1940s to launch a
computer division of the company, claiming that the worldwide market was
minute and limited to scientists.[^7] Watson Sr.\'s infamous (but hard
to corroborate) estimate of potential demand was \"maybe five
computers.\"[^8] In the event, his son, Thomas Watson, Jr., was right in
predicting the penetration of the computer into the commercial sector:
by 1959 the market of computers for business far exceeded that for the
military, and under Watson, Jr. IBM\'s valuation had grown from \$900
million to \$8 billion.[^9]

As early as 1945, a breakthrough of another kind was made that was to be
as important for the growth of CVR as progress in brute computing power.
Since the earliest computing devices of Schickard, Pascal, Leibniz, and
Babbage, the purpose of the computer was clear: as the name implies, it
was a calculator designed to spare humans the tedious effort of solving
equations that were either long or, as in the case of tables,
numerous.[^10] Credit for a new vision of how a calculating machine
might be used goes to Vannevar Bush.[^11] In the same period that ENIAC
was being built, Bush published an article in a popular American
magazine that laid out a stunning vision of technological and media
convergence. Bush, who served during World War II as Director of the
wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development,[^12] dubbed his
proposed information system the \"memex.\" The memex was to be a vast
multimedia database stored on microfilm and accessed by a computerized
index built on the principles of associative logic.[^13] The user\'s
meandering trail through the database could itself be recorded and
accessed again.[^14]

In 1963, Douglas Engelbart founded the Augmentation Research Center
(ARC) with US military funding through the Advanced Research Project
Agency (ARPA, later DARPA). Engelbart knew and cited Bush\'s
article;[^15] he also shared Bush\'s goal of using the computer for
operations far beyond mere mathematical calculation. As the name
implies, ARC\'s mission was to explore how the computer could augment
the human intellect in ways that Bush had anticipated. With the passage
of time, Engelbart could see that Bush\'s memex was a technological
hybrid whose use would be cumbersome, time-consuming, and ultimately
frustrating to the user.[^16] In effect, the work of the ARC was
completely to computerize Bush\'s memex and make other improvements. New
devices and processes were developed at ARC to make the parts of the
system more ergonomic and efficient: the mouse and pointer cursor;
display editing; linking and in-file object addressing; multiple
windows; hypermedia.[^17] In the \'60s and \'70s the lab developed a
hypermedia-groupware system called NLS (for oNLine System).[^18]
Parallel research was done at the University of North Carolina, Chapel
Hill by Frederick Brooks, who founded that university\'s Department of
Computer Science in 1965. His work since then has tested and implemented
his concept of \"intelligence amplification,\" whose similarity to
Engelbart\'s notion of augmentation has been noted by Rheingold 1991 (p.
36).[^19]

Major contributions to the prehistory of CVR were also made by Ivan
Sutherland in the 1960s. In research for his Ph.D. dissertation
(Sutherland 1963), Sutherland developed *Sketchpad*, the first program
that permitted the user to make highly precise engineering and
architectural drawings on a CRT. *Sketchpad* also had the ability to
zoom in and to zoom out on the CRT. It could produce memory structures,
rubberband lines, and it was able to make exact lines, corners, etc. at
a scale of 1:2000.[^20] In 1966, while teaching at Harvard,
Sutherland\'s interest in computer-generated graphics led him to the
first experiments in what would much later be called \"virtual
reality.\" Adapting an existing video system whose display was
\"head-mounted\" (i.e., a so-called head-mounted display, or HMD),
Sutherland substituted computer graphics input for the video, thereby
immersing the wearer of the display into a virtual world consisting of a
simple wire-frame room with the cardinal points (NORTH, SOUTH, etc.)
inscribed on the \"walls\".[^21] As early as 1964, Sutherland\'s
research, like Engelbart\'s, received US military funding through ARPA.
In 1968, Sutherland joined with David C. Evans, then a fellow professor
at the University of Utah, and founded Evans & Sutherland with the
financial support of Venrock, the Rockefellar family\'s venture capital
company. The company\'s original products were graphics devices, such as
image generators, and flight simulators. The company struggled until the
Navy contracted in 1977 to purchase its CT5 image generator for use in
the new CH 46 helicopter system.[^22]

Just as Evans & Sutherland was finally getting off the ground as a
commercial venture, James Clark was arriving at Stanford to teach
computer science. In 1978, he created a processor which he called the
\"geometry engine.\" This was a chip onto which the algorithms used to
create 3D computer graphics had been programmed, thereby dramatically
speeding up rendering time. By 1982, Clark was ready to leave the
university and start up Silicon Graphics Inc.[^23] By 1984, SGI (as the
company was to be officially named in 1999) was shipping its first
workstations and producing high-end 3D graphics systems that came to
dominate the market by the early 1990s from the time when the Onyx
Reality Engine was launched in 1993 and the first SGI Reality Center was
created by David Hughes of SGI in Theale (Berkshire), England.[^24] The
Center featured a Reality Theater, which is a room in which the audience
views a curved screen onto which images from a SGI supercomputer are
projected. The Reality Theater provides an immersive, interactive, and
real-time environment in which large or small groups of people can
experience a virtual world together. Because of their high cost, Reality
Theaters have mainly been sold to government agencies and corporations
(particularly to companies in the field of oil and gas exploration). In
2000, UCLA was to become the first university in the world to build a
SGI Reality Theater.[^25]

The 1980s also saw the development of haptics, or \"the use of physical
sensors to provide users with a sense of touch at the skin level, and
force feedback information from muscles and joints.\"[^26] Jaron Lanier
and his company VPL developed several important patents in this area and
marketed the DataGlove, an early haptic device.[^27]

The 1990s saw the development of several other kinds of theaters and
displays dedicated to the presentation of real-time, immersive virtual
reality. In 1992, the first was created for SIGGRAPH 92 Showcase. The
CAVE is a cube-shaped room, typically 10\' x 10\' in size or bigger,
onto to whose walls, ceiling, and floor the computer output is projected
in real-time. The first CAVE was used for scientific visualization of a
variety of astrophysical phenomena such as the Rayleigh-Taylor
Instability and gravitational wave components predicted by Einstein\'s
General Theory of Relativity.[^28] CAVEs are particularly good spaces in
which to run CVR models of architectural and urban spaces, since users
are fully immersed within the virtual world, and the right angles of the
CAVE generally fit the angles of virtual architectural spaces. The UCLA
CVR Lab has been able to run one demonstration in the CAVE of Virginia
Tech, thanks to the generosity of the Virginia Tech College of
Architecture and Urban Studies.[^29] Also in the 1990s, Evans &
Sutherland marketed the StarRider domical theater, which has mainly been
used in planetaria.[^30] At the invitation of Evans & Sutherland, the
UCLA CVR Lab has been able to run a demonstration of its models in the
StarRider theater, with results that were not quite as satisfying as
those in the Reality Theater and CAVE. Owing to the StarRider\'s domical
projection surface the rectilinear shapes of our architectural models
were distorted. It remains to be seen if the StarRider can be tweaked to
provide better performance for typical CVR models.

As the theoretical and practical foundations for virtual reality were
laid in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, early applications tended to be
military and industrial. This is not surprising in view of the high cost
of the first systems. Flight simulation and oil exploration have already
been mentioned.[^31] But cultural applications of the kind that interest
us were not far behind. Nicholas Negroponte indeed has identified the
Aspen Movie Map of 1978\--funded, inevitably, by ARPA\--as the very
first multimedia project (Negroponte 1995, pp. 65-67).[^32] It can also
be considered the direct ancestor of CVR, which could not yet exist
because, as we have seen, the necessary hardware and software had not
yet been created. The streets of Aspen, Colorado were filmed in each
direction by taking a shot every three feet. The footage of the straight
streets were put onto one videodisc; the curves were put onto a second
videodisc. The videodiscs were driven by a computer, on whose display
the footage was seen. The user had the illusion of driving through the
town, turning right or left at intersections, as he wished. The
motivation behind the project was to give the US armed forces the
virtual equivalent of the kind of training the Israel army used to
prepare for the successful raid on July 3, 1976 on the Entebbe, Uganda
airport, where 103 hostages were being held by Palestinian terrorists.
But whereas the Israeli training took place in a physical reconstruction
of the Entebbe airport (which, by chance, Israelis had designed), the US
solution was to create a system that could support photorealistic
computer simulations of any and every possible terrorist target around
the world.

Michael Naimark, a media artist who collaborated with Negroponte on the
Aspen project, characterized the system as \"surrogate travel,\" not
\"virtual reality,\" a term whose coining is generally attributed to
Jaron Lanier at some unspecified time in the late 1980s.[^33] Even more
common in the 1980s was the term \"simulation\" (Rheingold 1991, p. 24;
Biocca, Kim, Levy 1995, p. 6), which was taken over from computerized
flight training. The Aspen Movie Map inspired several other prototypical
CVR projects in the 1980s, including UCLA\'s Project CICERO, which
proposed to create an urban simulation on videodisc of ancient Rome
using the great \"Plastico,\" or plaster-of-Paris model of the city in
the time of Constantine. The model is housed in the Museum of Roman
Civilization in a suburb of Rome (see Frischer 1988). In the event, test
photographs showed that the Rome model, which had been started in the
1930s and was intended to be seen from a balcony at a height of several
meters, did not have enough detail to sustain a close viewing, and so
Project CICERO was never implemented in the manner originally proposed.
In the mid-1990s, CICERO was revivified as UCLA\'s ROME REBORN project,
which saw the use of VR technology in effect to recreate the Plastico
from the beginning, with new archaeological data\--not the Plastico
itself\--used as the basis of the VR model.

By the early 1990s, the term \"virtual reality\" had come into general
currency (cf., e.g., Fischer 1991; Lanier 1992) and the 90s were years
in which true CVR projects first appeared\--not always, as we will see,
to great acclaim. But as with any innovation, the early failures were as
instructive and useful as the successes. The spread of the term and the
VR industry itself can be measured from, e.g., the following statistics
gleaned from the US Patent Office database. In abstracts prior to 1991,
the term \"virtual reality\" does not appear at all. From 1991 to 1995,
we find it 22 times. But by 1996-2001, the number of attestations has
increased to 172.

Given the terminological creep by which \"virtual reality\" displaced
such earlier terms as \"surrogate travel,\" \"artificial reality,\" and
\"simulation,\" it is not surprising that the 1990s also saw some
confusion about what virtual reality really means. One of the pioneers
of the field indeed by 1997 was expressing her exasperation about the
term\'s misuse as a catchall for any use of computers that reeked of the
\"bizarre and science-fiction\" (Cruz-Neira 1997, p. 2-2). She cited
with approval the definition of Steve Bryson and Steve Feiner, who
called \"virtual reality\" \"the use of three-dimensional displays and
interaction devices to explore real-time computer-generated
environments.\" Heim 1993 (pp. 109-127) attributes to virtual reality
any or all of the following characteristics: simulation, interaction,
artificiality, immersion, telepresence, full-body immersion, and
networked communications. In what follows, we understand \"virtual
reality\" as implying the use of three dimensional computer graphics in
a system that is (at a minimum) real-time, immersive, and interactive.
CVR is the use of VR systems specifically for the presentation of the
world\'s cultural heritage sites. For our purposes, an important
distinction should be made between VR and computer graphics (CG), with
which VR is sometimes confused. While all VR could be called CG, not all
CG constitute VR. The difference is that, whereas CG is simply
\"pictorial representations of objects and data using computers,\"[^34]
VR is CG requiring immersion, interactivity, and a real-time delivery
system. Generally, those CG that are not properly VR fail the test of
real-time applicability. Thus, whereas in a true VR system, the computer
generates images at a frame rate equal or greater than the
*phi*-phenomenon (ca. 24 frames per second),[^35] CG used in special
effects in movies require average rendering times of ten hours per
frame.[^36]

As the 1990s progressed, another important development could be
detected: a partitioning of VR developers between what could loosely be
called \"artists\" and \"scientists.\" Heim humorously applied a
\"bicoastal\" metaphor to this division: \"There are two coasts in the
mind. The West Coast wants VR to serve as a machine-driven LSD that
brings about a revolution in consciousness; the East Coast wants a new
tool for supporting current projects and solving given problems\" (p.
142). In a recent book, Holtzman 1998 discusses the aesthetic
possibilities of VR, reveling, as an artist, in the new creative
possibilities VR technology affords. As yet there is no similar study of
the other branch of the bifurcation. Below, we will argue that one
reason a professional organization of CVR developers is needed is
precisely to provide a framework in which such studies can occur.
Ironically, it has been the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Lab, located
on the West Coast, that has done some of the early studies on scientific
CVR.

**3. Foreground**

> \"With appropriate programming, such a display could literally be the
> Wonderland into which Alice walked.\"
>
> \--Ivan Sutherland (1965)
>
> \"VR has the potential to create an extremely rich perceptual and
> cognitive environment. Interacting with such an environment may
> sometimes tax mental capacities. Under such perceptual and cognitive
> stress people may be more likely to accept percepts and statements as
> real because they don\'t have the capacity to check for veracity, and
> the default value is real.\"
>
> \--Shapiro and McDonald 1995, p. 334
>
> \"If the cinema art is going to draw its subjects so generously from
> history, it owes it to its patrons and its own higher ideals to
> achieve greater accuracy. No picture of a historical nature ought to
> be offered to the public until a reputable historian has had a chance
> to criticize and revise it.\"
>
> \--Prof. Louis Gottschalk, University of Chicago, 1935 in a letter to
> the president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Rosenstone 1995, pp. 45-46)

The theory and practice of CVR developed apace in the 1990s. As early as
1989, Reilly and Shennan proposed applying 3D computer technology to
archaeological problems, especially three-dimensional modeling of
archaeological sites (Reilly 1989; Reilly and Shennan 1989). A volume of
occasional papers was published by the British Museum in 1996 that
included contributions such as Ryan 1996 and Chalmers and Stoddart 1996
that followed up on Reilly\'s suggestions. Forte and Siliotti 1997
(originally published in Italian in 1996) in effect present a catalogue
of actual archaeological computer modeling projects from the first half
of the 90s. From the list of contributors of the models, we can see that
major players up to that point were commercial: Taisei Corp.,
Hochfeiler, IBM, Infobyte, Santa Barbara Studios and Pathways
Production, etc. (Forte and Siliotti 1997, p. 288). CINECA is the
exceptional academic institution on the list. Given the expense of VR
systems in the early 1990s, this is not surprising.

An odd feature of Forte and Siliotti 1997 is the frequent disconnect
between the descriptions of the archaeological sites and the computer
models used to illustrate them. Rarely, if ever, are we told who made
the model, whether there was any consultation between the modelmaker and
the archaeologists, and what elements of the model are known with
certainty and which are hypothetical. Yet, as Sutherland trenchantly
noted as early as 1965, \"with appropriate programming, such a \[HMD\]
display could literally be the Wonderland into which Alice walked\"\--a
Giuseppe Arcimbolo portrait, as opposed to a scientific illustration by
such Renaissance masters as Francesco di Giorgio Martini or Luca Pacioli
(see Crosby 1997, p. 232). This is not in any way to deprecate the value
of Forte and Siliotti\'s seminal publication.

The issue of \"historical credibility\" raised by Forte and Siliotti is
the explicit subject of Ryan 1996. As he notes (p. 107), many early CVR
projects were undertaken as \"vehicles for demonstrating advanced
graphics techniques with any archaeological considerations playing a
less important role\" (p. 107). Ryan urged archaeologists \"to
communicate archaeological and historical information to their
colleagues and to the public, not to demonstrate their skills in the
latest computer graphics techniques\" (p. 107). In this article, Ryan\'s
concern was to relate the appearance of a computer model to the
resulting inferences that unsuspecting users might draw about the
quality of the archaeological data on which the model was based.

Accuracy is the topic of a theoretical paper by Shapiro and McDonald
(1995). Taking as their point of departure earlier psychological
research showing that \"belief is the default,\" they argue that, in VR
systems, users are even more apt to lend credence to their experiences
than they do in traditional media (cf. especially pp. 336-337).
Operating from the assumption that all VR will be, to use Heim\'s term,
\"West Coast,\" Shapiro and McDonald confront only the issue of the
effect of VR on users of artistic content. Recalling the old debate
about the effect of mimesis on the viewer which goes back to Plato and
Aristotle, they see both the danger of escapism and also the benefit of
therapy. \"Obviously spending too much time in virtual reality could be
damaging to those who need to confront reality and not escape it. It
could be particularly damaging to children and adolescents. But in some
cases living in a VR could be therapeutic. Certain kinds of therapy
encourage patients \'to abandon unproductive images and substitute more
efficient images of reality.\' In a skilled therapist\'s hands virtual
reality might assist such processes\" (p. 342). Because Shapiro and
McDonald do not consider \"East Coast\" VR, they do not discuss its
possible effects on scientific research and education. We will return to
this below.

The issues of accuracy, authentication, and scholarly input into the
modeling process were brought urgently to the fore in the Pompeii CVR
project of the now defunct Simlab of Carnegie Mellon University.[^37]
The Pompeii project also raised questions about the use of real-time VR
in the museum context. Simlab was co-directed by artist Lowry Burgess
and computer scientist Carl Loeffler.[^38] It appears to have reached
the peak of its existence in the period 1994-1996, when it created
computer models of the Temple of Isis, the Greek theater, and the
Triangular Forum at Pompeii. The models were shown in a gallery at the
De Young Museum in San Francisco in 1995. The public, which flocked in
great numbers to the exhibit, was invited to don HMDs and explore the
virtual world created by the Simlab team. SGI, whose platform was
utilized, supplied the hardware but not a technician regularly on duty.
The frequent technical glitches inevitable in any such exhibit thus
often caused delays and other problems to which the museum staff found
it hard to respond. The number of HMDs was far fewer than would ideally
have been needed to give every visitor a chance to visit virtual
Pompeii. Those that did get to visit found that they were left alone to
explore the virtual world without a guide or any source of help and
information.

The sense that the Pompeii exhibit was more, in Ryan\'s terms, a
\"vehicle for demonstrating advanced graphics techniques\" than for
conveying historical information to the museum visitor was reinforced by
the poor quality of the model. Despite the project\'s financial support
by the Archaeological Institute of America, no professional Pompeianists
are known to have been consulted when the project was in its inception,
nor to have had any major input on the final product. Predictably,
professional archaeologists and art historians were not impressed by the
results. In a thoughtful review in *Architronics*, Brigman 1996 wrote:

> Let\'s begin with the troubling news. Lynn Holden, representing the
> Virtual Pompeii design team, showed video excerpts from an interactive
> walk-through of Pompeii\'s Temple of Isis and Large Theater. The
> Virtual Pompeii project, which is maturing thanks to a cadre of Onyx
> Workstations (donated by Silicon Graphics) and a grant from the
> Archaeological Institute of America, got mixed reviews. Certainly the
> design group at Carnegie Mellon\'s Virtual Reality Simulation
> Laboratory (VR SIMLAB) have ambitiously stalked what Silicon Graphics
> calls in their brochures \"infinite reality.\" At the same time,
> however, the effect is disturbing and uncanny, sometimes cheesy and
> slick. It all too frequently feels packaged. Although impressive to
> those craving transport (indeed, at times the Pompeian site was
> \"spectacular\"), when Mr. Holden finished narrating the otherworldly
> glide-through of the restored Campanian complex, replete with
> anachronistic musical accompaniment and an androidal priest, there was
> a palpable electricity in the audience. Some sighed with what seemed
> to me exasperation, others with wonder.
>
> Comments from the crowd ranged from the prosaic (i.e., the
> frustrations of trying to use the unwieldy navigation helmet that
> accompanied the project\'s public debut at the M.H. de Young Museum in
> San Francisco) to the hostile. In particular, a number of scholars
> observed that the design team had fashioned their temple complex out
> of mural vignettes excised from several different archaeological sites
> and contexts. Painted panels along the periphery of the reconstructed
> sanctuary were unsettling to many precisely because they had been
> filched from other Roman cities. Thus, the reconstruction took form as
> a pastiched continuum, a collage of recombinant parts. Not the kind of
> thing scholars of Antiquity are bound to love.

But pioneering efforts that fail can be just as valuable as those that
succeed. Such is the case with Simlab\'s Pompeii project. For those who
studied the show in San Francisco, lessons could be learned about the
best VR displays to use in public exhibits; the desirability of having a
well-trained technician on duty at all times; and the need to make the
virtual world an interactive information system, not simply an aesthetic
experience. Even more important lessons could be learned about the
structure and purpose of such CVR projects: although Simlab did invite
some Pompeian experts to view its models, they were invited only after
the completion of the bulk of the project and were not expected to do
anything but admire the results.[^39] This is exactly backwards: for the
kind of scientific accuracy demanded by Ryan 1996, the experts should be
in charge of collection of the modeling data, should regularly review
the modelmaker\'s progress, and should be given the opportunity to sign
off on the final product.

On the other side of the Atlantic in the 1990s archaeologists have also
been rarely involved in the creation and interpretation of Virtual
Reality models. In Europe, most CVR applications have developed as an
offspring of engineering research in computer graphics. With a few
notable exceptions, most teams have not included historians,
archaeologists or humanists, but only computer experts. Only recently
have museums started participating in such projects as content
providers, but these concern educational multimedia applications, which
are only the tip of the CVR iceberg. In these conditions, it is no
surprise that the "historical method" has not been a primary concern of
CVR in Europe. In the early CVR projects, archaeologists had \"to agree
to be guinea pigs for the research of computer programmers" (Daniels
1997), and later they did little to improve their junior status.
Notwithstanding the commitment of an international group of
interdisciplinary researchers, official archaeology and VR seem to have
marched on separate if not divergent paths.

Within the European Union, CVR (and the so-called digital culture or
Digicult, as it is officially defined) falls into the category of
Information Technology (IT). In the 5^th^ Framework, the European
Commission (EC) introduced IST (Information Society Technologies)
Programme as a funding source for IT. In July 2000, IST called for
projects concerning the "virtual representations of cultural and
scientific objects.\" While CVR was relegated in the 5^th^ Framework to
the technology-dominated world of IT, the cultural initiatives of the EC
are clearly inspired by a (mis)conception of culture as ephemeral,
contingent, and "artistic." Unfortunately nothing replaced Raphael, the
EC\'s program for culture which ended in 1998 and that offered more
funding opportunities for Cultural Heritage and CVR.

Several "digital culture" projects have been funded through IST since
1999, and some of the most recent ones have been reported at this
Conference. Those funded in 1999 that are involved with archaeology
mainly exploit the resources of archaeological sites and museums\--e.g.,
ARCHEOGUIDE, which is a HMD-system at Olympia;[^40] and the TOURBOT
museums project, in which an avatar of the user can visit virtual
museums, while the viewer himself views the experience at home via the
Internet. [^41] Projects such as these\--however worthwhile\--confirm
that adage that \"Europe finances only expensive gadgets.\" Both
projects propose to increase the quantity of information available to
visitors, but in neither project proposal is there any corresponding
sign of a desire to increase the quality of the content.

Nevertheless, the participation of four IST projects at this Conference
(and the fact that the conference itself was funded by the EU, even if
the proposal did sharply criticize the EU) shows that something is
moving on the engineers' side. For their part, some enlightened
archaeologists outside the circle of enthusiasts who for many years have
been preaching the advent of the computer era have realized the
potential of 3D visualization for scientific research and scientific
communication. They understand that, besides being a powerful
educational tool for presenting archaeology to the non-specialist, CVR
raises "questions that tax the ingenuity of archaeologists" and is
itself therefore in need of further reflection and study (Renfrew 1997).
But misunderstanding and lack of communication and collaboration between
the two groups still predominate. The engineers go on believing they can
implement ambitious projects on cultural heritage without the
collaboration of content experts. Their projects are nevertheless funded
and therefore officially approved. The archaeologists react to their
exclusion by relegating virtual models to the category of fancy museum
exhibition tools useful, at best, for *vulgarisation* or, at worst, for
videogames.

![](media/image1.emf){width="5.868055555555555in"
height="5.093055555555556in"}

Fig. 1: Diagram of a VR system (Biocca and Delaney 1995, p. 114).

In Fig. 1, we see the basic functions of a VR system and note the
crucial role played by the Designer as the initiator and manager of the
entire system. The question raised by the Simlab Pompeii project, by
recent EU-sponsored initiatives as well as by the mainly commercial
models utilized by Forte and Siliotti 1997 is: \"who is the Designer?\"
If the Designer is to be a technician using CVR to display his wares or
a commercial company using CVR to earn a profit, then the criticisms of
Brigman will become a perennial complaint of academics. And, as has
happened with historians\' complaints about historical films such as
that quoted above by Louis Gottschalk in the 1930s, the criticisms of
academic CVR developers are likely to fall upon deaf ears. Of course,
\"the Designer\" should ideally be \"the Designers\": the technician
responsible for hardware and software; the content developer responsible
for the image of Leonardo\'s Vitruvian Man in the diagram of Fig. 1; and
the digital graphic artist, or modelmaker, responsible for actually
creating the VR file. In some settings, there will be even more experts
involved: in a commercial project, for example, the producer, financier,
and marketer; in a government project, entrenched bureaucrats and
elected officials. Of course, the participation of some of these other
\"Designers\" may complicate, or completely undermine, the
implementation of scientific standards in CVR modeling. This raises the
question of power: for the quesiton of \"who is the Designer?\" is
really tantamount to \"who is in control?\" How can academic CVR
developers ensure that in at least some instances the answer to this
question in the future will be less painful than it has been in the
recent past?

**4. Where Do We Go from Here? Proposal for a Professional Organization
for CVR Developers**

> \"But we need some sense of metaphysical anchoring, I think, to
> enhance virtual worlds. A virtual world can be virtual only as long as
> we can contrast it with the real (anchored) world.\"[^42]
>
> \--Michael Heim (1993)

As M. Forte noted, in the 1990s CVR models tended to be designed for
high-end workstations and supercomputers (Forte 2000). But by the year
2000, real-time VR is possible on the PC platform with relatively
inexpensive graphics cards. Moreover, soon to hit the commercial market
are PC-based 3D engines; inexpensive graphics cards supporting
anti-aliasing; and CPUs and buses supporting much faster calculations
and data transfer than ever. The average PC of 2001 will indeed have at
least as much computing power as the expensive SGI Onyx Reality Engine
supercomputer of 1993. The PC of 2002 will make this comparison
obsolete, and on and on with no end in sight. As power increases,
applications will keep pace, if only because\--as has been seen over and
over again\--chip manufacturers will provide seed money to research
projects and commercial start-ups exploiting the otherwise superfluous
resources of their latest models. Moreover, as Barceló et al. 2000 make
clear, in the five years since the publication of Forte and Silioti, CVR
has taken hold in the academy. Many individual projects and labs such as
the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory and the Reality Center at
CINECA have sprung up with the mission of creating scientific CVR
models.

Characteristic of recent CVR projects and theoretical work has been an
implicit, or sometimes explicit, recognition of the key advantage that
academic CVR produced by subject experts has over its commercial
counterparts: what Heim referred to as \"metaphysical anchoring\" and
what we prefer to call the added value of scientific credibility and
authentication.[^43] In a recent publication, Barceló still noted with
disappointment that \"in most cases the use of virtual reality in
archaeology seems more an artistic task than an inferential process.
Virtual reality is the modern version of the artist that gave a 
\'possible\' reconstruction using water-colours\" (Barceló 2000). Yet
other articles in the same publication focussed explicitly on the
question of accuracy (cf Kanter 2000; Frischer, et al. 2000). One
contribution (Forte 2000) brought up a more fundamental issue:

> Noticeable gaps are represented by the fact that the models are not
> "transparent" in respect to the initial information *(what were the
> initial data?)* and by the use of the peremptory single reconstruction
> without offering alternatives (*it could have been like this but we
> can also offer other models\...*).

The questions Forte poses in his parentheses are typical issues of
metadata.[^44] In effect, Forte is calling for a new philology of CVR: a
methodology for how CVR models should be edited and published. In a
classic work on textual criticism, Maas defined the tasks confronting
the editor of a text as follows:

> In each individual case the original text either has or has not been
> transmitted. So our first task is to establish what must or may be
> regarded as transmitted\--to make the recension (*recensio*); our next
> is to examine this tradition and discover whether it may be considered
> as giving the original (*examinatio*); if it proves not to give the
> original, we must try to reconstruct the original by conjecture
> (*divinatio*) or at least to isolate the corruption (Maas 1958, p. 1).

*Mutatis mutandis, recensio, examinatio,* and *divinatio* have analogous
procedures in the creation and publication of a CVR model. Philology
also offers CVR developers answers to how Forte\'s questions might be
handled. As Maas notes (pp. 21ff.), a philologically prepared text is
not simply printed and presented without further ado by the editor. The
philologist has the duty of introducing the text with a preface that
\"should (1) describe all the witnesses...(2) demonstrate the
relationship of the witnesses where this is at all possible in a
stemma...(3) characterize the quality of the archetype...(4) settle all
questions of spelling and dialect\" (Maas 1958, pp. 21-22). Moreover, in
the text, certain signs are used to alert the reader to a problem: \< \>
for conjectural additions; \[ \] for conjectural deletions; † for
irremediable corruptions. Finally, underneath the text, the philologist
must print an *apparatus criticus,* noting: \"(1) every departure from
the archetype not already indicated in the text; (2) all rejected
variants...(3) the sub-variants...(4) identical readings of two or more
variant-carriers....(5) doubt as to the correctness of the text\" (pp.
22-23). Thus, the philologist editing a text deals with metadata in the
preface, in *the apparatus criticus*, and in the text itself through the
use of signs.[^45] None of this can be done in the same way by the CVR
developer, who works in multimedia, unlike the editor of texts who works
in the single medium of print. Thus, Maas\' rules can only be applied by
analogy, but they certainly can be applied\--at least if CVR developers
unite to define their own standards, rules, and conventions. On its
Roman Forum Web site, and in its other products, the UCLA Cultural
Virtual Reality Lab has been experimenting with the development of such
philological procedures, including even the *apparatus criticus* (see
www.cvrlab.org).

In CVR, then, accuracy means not only that the data are represented
correctly; it also implies the development of a new \"CVR philology\" to
handle metadata. The two goals of professional CVR developers\--accuracy
and authenticity\--are two sides of the same coin. Accuracy pertains to
the data and metadata; authenticity to the user\'s experience of the
data and metadata. Research on other media suggests that, ironically,
far from getting in the way of the user\'s experience and sense of
authenticity, metadata can even add to the credibility of a CVR model,
as can be seen in the following study of Condry (1989) cited by Shapiro
and McDonald (1995, p. 338):

> Condry (1989) illustrated another complexity of the relationship
> between sensory cues and reality judgments. He tells of watching the
> first moon landing with his then 5-year-old son. The same perceptual
> cue, the poor quality of the television picture, convinced his son
> that the picture was not real, but added to the adult\'s feeling that
> this was indeed real. The child apparently made reality judgments
> based strongly on veridicality. But the adult inferred that an image
> being transmitted from the moon in real time with 1969 technology
> would be degraded. He would have been suspicious of a studio-quality
> image. Thus, sophisticated, adult metacognitions about the nature of
> communication can create a situation in which less sensory information
> is more realistic.

As applied to CVR, this suggests that a philologically edited CVR model
explicitly marked up by \< \>, i.e., conjectural supplements, and by †,
i.e., areas where data is hopelessly lost, could well be perceived by
users to have more authenticity precisely because it would have *less*
veridicality than a perfectly restored model presented without any
philological apparatus.

On the other hand, philology itself supports the CVR developer\'s
constant need courageously to produce supplements where evidence is
lacking: \"if the sense requires it I am prepared to write
*Constantinopolis* where the MSS. have the monosyllabic interjection
*o*.\" wrote A.E. Housman (cf. Reynolds and Wilson 1968, p. 162),
echoing the earlier sentiment of Moritz Haupt (1808-1874). There is a
point at which many of our models have to go beyond empirical
observations and , to provide a satisfactory user experience or to
suggest particular interpretations, must necessarily introduce less
certain elements. Although grounded in evidence and supportable
inference, many of these elements are essentially speculative in form.
At one extreme, this may entail a decision about paint colors on an
otherwise intact statue or on some other artifact. At the other, it
might concern the form of a building where the only remains are short
lengths of robber trenches or beam slots surviving between later
disturbances. For many archaeologists, the latter is closer to their
reality than are the impressive ruins of Pompeii or the Roman Forum.
Indeed, we may often need to work far beyond this level of uncertainty,
for example when visualizing a landscape or townscape in which the area
known from archaeological investigation is only a tiny fragment of the
whole. On such a basis we can build interactive environments suited to
the needs of a wide range of audiences from casual museum visitors to
advanced scholars.

Sometimes, we are not the first to integrate the fragmentary record of
archaeology. When we accept a previous scholar\'s conjectural
supplement, we need to put that on record. Even if we do not agree with
earlier scholarship, we owe it to our predecessors and to our users to
note and, ideally, to display within our models any plausible
alternative views. There may indeed be more than one conjecture on
record. In a philological *apparatus criticus*, any alternative readings
should be cited, including \"conjectures in order of merit\" (West 1973,
p. 87). The same should be true of a CVR model, as has been suggested by
Roberts and Ryan 1997, and has been applied by Frischer et al. 2000 as
well as by David Wheatley and Graeme Earl in the Negotiating Avebury
Project.[^46]

There is nothing inherently wrong in going from *o* to
*Constantinopolis*, or in presenting, within the same model, alternative
views of how the site might have originally looked. To the contrary. The
important point is that when we add information beyond what is
archaeologically attested, we need to flag our supplements or
alternative interpretations of the data by means of signs.

At this point, it is important to invoke semiotics: Maas correctly calls
\< \>, \[ \], and † \"signs.\" Most signs are arbitrary, and that is
certainly the case with the standard philological specimens mentioned by
Maas (in West 1973, pp. 80-81, there are even more signs catalogued).
Why should † mean \"hopelessly corrupt\" and not, for example, \"dead\"
or \"Christian\" or, for that matter, \"intersection\"? As Eco notes,
\"the sign is a gesture produced with the intention of
communicating...The existence of a certain rule (a code) enabling both
the sender and the addressee to understand the manifestation in the same
way must, of course, be presupposed if the transmission is to be
successful...signs seem to depend on arbitrary decisions\" (Eco 1986, p.
16). In order for the communication act to succeed, the sender and
addressee must have agreed in advance what the initially arbitrary and
therefore meaningless signs shall mean when transmitted. This implies
that there is a crucial social element in the development of any
semiotic system. † means \"hopelessly corrupt\" in a philological text
because philologists like Maas have long since agreed that it should so
signify and since authorities like Maas have codified such agreements in
handbooks that no self-respecting professional philologist would have
neglected to master before attempting to practice his craft. Thus, it
will not do for one CVR lab to develop metadata signs and standards.
That would be like one person trying to invent a language or alphabet:
it could be done, but it would mean that he could communicate only with
himself.

Beyond philology, CVR developers have an interest, which this time they
share with their counterparts, the engineers and technicians, in banding
together to define common technical and aesthetic standards for the
models they make. If each consumer electrical device ran on a unique
voltage, the market for home electrical products would be only a small
fraction of what it is today. You would wire your house with 135 volt
current to run your heater, and then have to re-wire your house with a
55 volt line to run your new toaster. Each purchase of a new electrical
device would require a major investment in new infrastructure, which
would perhaps serve only your latest purchase. In the CVR world, there
are many competing file formats and proprietary software packages that
are used to produce CVR models. As long as different CVR developers use
different solutions, the market for CVR will be quite limited. Like
purchasers of new toasters or television sets, buyers of new CVR models
want to be able to plug them in and operate them automatically without
worrying about their computing infrastructure. They want the model of a
building in one part of a city to operate smoothly with another model of
a site elsewhere in the same city. They want to be able to purchase a
model of the Roman Forum in 100 B.C. from vendor A; and a model of the
Forum in 200 A.D. from vendor B; and they want an interface that allows
seamless switching from one model to the other. For their part, CVR
developers do not want to have to guess right about what hardware and
software their potential customers own or are willing to purchase.
Implicit in the technical compatibility of CVR models is their aesthetic
homogeneity. To look right, as well as to operate properly, CVR models
from different vendors should share the same texture library. Adoption
of common technical and aesthetic standards thus serves the interests
both of consumers\--who will buy more CVR models if they can leverage
their initial investment in a VR system by being able to run all
possible CVR models\--and of producers, who will operate with the
assurance of a large installed base for their products.

Uniting to define their own standards, rules, and conventions for
scientific CVR models is just one of several reasons why it is
important, at this point in the development of CVR, for CVR developers
to start their own professional organization. The main reasons can be
quickly listed:

> •to hold an annual meeting where members can share new ideas and
> projects; where training classes can be offered; and where new
> products of CVR hardware and software suppliers can be exhibited
>
> •to facilitate networking and collaboration between members
>
> •to create a Web site for ongoing communications between members and
> to promote the organization to the world at large
>
> •to represent CVR developers\' interests before governments, trade
> associations, and other scholarly organizations
>
> •to develop philological conventions and technical standards for the
> creation and publication of authenticated CVR models; to develop and
> disseminate a common library of textures; to offer a seal of approval
> on members\' models that conform to authentication standards; and to
> offer a clearinghouse on its Web site where members\' authenticated
> models can be made available for third-party licensing.

The publication of Barceló et al. 2000 and the success of VAST in Arezzo
in November, 2000 certainly suggest that a critical mass of CVR
developers now exists to make the creation of a professional
organization timely and worthwhile. Research has shown that there is no
such organization yet in existence, so the proposed new organization
would fill a distinct gap. Various related but ultimately distinct
organizations include:

> •ACADIA, the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture
> (see: www.acadia.org/home.html). It has existed since 1981 and \"was
> formed for the purpose of facilitating communication and information
> exchange regarding the use of computers in architecture, planning and
> building science\" (see Bylaws 2.1 at www.acadia.org/bylaws.html).
>
> •The Association for Computing Machinery (www.acm.org/) was the
> world\'s first educational and scientific computing society. It was
> founded in 1947 and, among many other activities impinging on CVR,
> sponsors SIGGRAPH.
>
> •Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology
> (archweb.leidenuniv.nl/caa00/index.htm), which was founded in 1973
> with the mission of encouraging communication between archaeologists,
> mathematicians and computer scientists.
>
> •The Virtual Reality Society (www.vrs.org.uk/public/whatisvrs.html),
> whose goals include the study of VR technology and software systems;
> VR applications; assessment of VR systems; philosophical and ethical
> issues; and advances relevant to VR.
>
> •The W3C Metadata Activity (www.w3.org/Metadata/), which is devoted to
> developing metadata standards for the World Wide Web.
>
> A Venn diagram between the proposed CVR association and these groups
> would show greater or lesser degrees of overlap in missions,
> interests, and activities. For example, CAA and The Virtual Reality
> Society would appear to have a far broader purview. The W3C Metadata
> Activity and ACADIA have a narrower focus. The Association for
> Computing Machinery is a catchall association which, through its SIGs
> (Special Interest Groups\--e.g., SIGACT, for algorithms and
> computational theory; SIGARCH, for computer architecture; SIGART, for
> artificial intelligence; SIGGRAPH, for computer graphics) could even
> become an organizational envelope for the proposed new CVR
> organization.
>
> Of course, there is no reason why the proposed new organization could
> not be affiliated with any or all of these related associations.
> Moreover, in its infancy it would make sense for the CVR organization
> to hold its annual meeting in the same city and at the same time as
> that of a related group such as CAA or SIGGRAPH. Indeed, we would
> propose that the CVR meeting be held in conjunction with SIGGRAPH in
> years when SIGGRAPH meets in Los Angeles; and that in the alternating
> year it be held in conjunction with CAA. We also propose that the CVR
> organization send a representative to the annual meetings of the other
> organizations listed above. As time goes on, the advisability of
> formally merging the CVR organization with another professional
> association can be studied. Right from the start, the CVR organization
> should seek a formal affiliation with as many of the other
> professional associations as possible. In general, the CVR
> organization should operate in a spirit of openness and cooperation.
>
> As the name of the new organization, we propose CVRO. This stands for
> \"Cultural Virtual Reality Organization\" and also puns on the Latin
> word \"*curo, curare*,\" meaning \"I take care of, am concerned
> about,\" the etymon of \"curate.\"[^47] Given CVR developers\'
> curatorial interest in preserving ancient monuments and disseminating
> them to the public, we think this pun is appropriate. We further
> recommend that CVRO\'s bylaws and structure be modeled on ACADIA (see
> www.acadia.org/bylaws.html). The UCLA Center for the Digital
> Humanities has volunteered to offer space and staff support for
> CVRO\'s headquarters (see www.cdh.ucla.edu/). As is the case with
> ACADIA, membership should be open to academic and professional CVR
> developers as well as students in CVR programs of study.
>
> The co-authors of this article have agreed to meet several times in
> 2001, including at SIGGRAPH 2001 in Los Angeles, to found CVRO and to
> build up a membership base. They furthermore agree that CVRO should
> hold its first official annual meeting in 2002 in conjunction with the
> annual meeting of CAA. A world that has a professional organization
> for indexers (www.asindexing.org/) and an HTML Writers\' Guild
> ([www.hwg.org/)]{.underline} is big enough for a new professional
> organization to promote the interests of CVR developers. Readers who
> agree and wish to join CVRO are cordially invited to contact one of
> the co-authors.[^48]

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**NOTES**

[^1]: See www.upenn.edu/almanac/v42/n18/eniac.html.

[^2]: See www.ee.upenn.edu/\~jan/eniacproj.html.

[^3]: Cf. Andy Grove\'s keynote talk at Comdex, 1996 at:
    www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/cn111896.htm.

[^4]: www.nwfusion.com/news/2000/0629ibmteraflop.html.

[^5]: The Apple Macintosh G4 which uses the 733MHz PowerPC chip; see
    www.apple.com/powermac/.

[^6]: ENIAC was built as a result of a contract No. W-670-ORD-4926
    signed on June 5, 1942, by the Trustees of the University of
    Pennsylvania and the U.S. Army Ordnance Department.

[^7]: See www.fortune.com/fortune/1999/11/22/biz4.html.

[^8]: www.nau.edu/rufis99/masterton/sld003.htm

[^9]: www.ibm.com/ibm/history/story/era2.html

[^10]: Cf. W. Aspray 1990.

[^11]: In the 19^th^ century, Oliver Wendell Holmes had the idea of a
    vast multimedia database to be created on a stereoscopic film
    system, but he did not yet have the idea of using the calculating
    machine to index the contents of the database. This is one of
    Bush\'s major contributions. On Holmes, see Biocca, Kim, Levy 1995,
    p. 9: \"in 1857 Oliver Wendell Holmes, father of the famous jurist,
    saw a glimpse of the future of VR when he lifted a stereoscope to
    his eyes for the first time. After the initial strain, as the lenses
    forced his eyes to fuse the different images only inches away,
    Holmes saw a vision. Holmes prophesied the creation of a giant
    universal database that would house essential copies of all
    things...Holmes, of course, saw the essential copy through the eyes
    of the 19^th^ century. Globe-trotting adventurer-scientists would
    stock a curio cabinet of essential samples of reality, a collection
    so large that it would be housed in an immense stereographic library
    or museum.\"

[^12]: See www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind00/access/c1/c1s1.htm#c1s1l1a.

[^13]: Cf. Bush 1945, section 6: \"consider a future device for
    individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and
    library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, \"memex\" will
    do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books,
    records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may
    be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged
    intimate supplement to his memory.

    It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from
    a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he
    works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which
    material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a
    keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an
    ordinary desk.

    In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken
    care of by improved microfilm....Most of the memex contents are
    purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts,
    pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and
    dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And
    there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a
    transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs,
    memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression
    of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in
    a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed. There
    is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual
    scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he
    taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book
    promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing
    positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom
    consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key
    projects it for his use.\"

[^14]: Cf. Bush 1945, section 7: \"the owner of the memex, let us say,
    is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and
    arrow....he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of
    materials available to him. And his trails do not fade....Tapping a
    few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at
    will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions.
    It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets
    a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes
    it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked
    into the more general trail.

[^15]: See, e.g., Engelbart 1962, sections III.A.1 (\"What Vannevar Bush
    proposed in 1945-48\") and III.A.2 (\"Comments related to Bush\'s
    article\").

[^16]: Cf. Engelbart 1962, section III.A.2: \" The Memex allows a human
    user to do more conveniently (less energy, more quickly) what he
    could have done with relatively ordinary photographic equipment and
    filing systems, but he would have had to spend so much time in the
    lower-level processes of manipulation that his mental time constants
    of memory and patience would have rendered the system unusable in
    the detailed and intimate sense which Bush illustrates.\"

[^17]: See:
    [http://unrev.stanford.edu/introduction/introduction.html]{.underline}.

[^18]: www.bootstrap.org/dce-bio.htm.

[^19]: See Rheingold 1991, pp. 25, 36;
    www.cs.unc.edu/Events/News/TuringAward.html.

[^20]: www.sun.com/960710/feature3/skeetchpad.html.

[^21]: www.sun.com/960710/feature3/alice.html

[^22]: For a history of Evans & Sutherland, see
    www.es.com/corporate/history.html.

[^23]: Cf. www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/jimclark.htm.

[^24]: For key dates in SGI\'s history see
    www.sgi.com/newsroom/factsheet.html. On the Reality Center, see
    www.sgi.com/realitycenter/. For additional information in this
    paragraph, I thank Afshad Mistri of SGI for a personal
    communication.

[^25]: See
    www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/classics/faculty/frischer/000125portal.html.

[^26]: Quoted from the Virtual Reality Glossary on the SGI Web site at
    www.sgi.com/virtual_reality/overview/glossary.html.

[^27]: See www.redherring.com/mag/issue01/guru.html.

[^28]: See Roy, et al. 1994; www.sv.vt.edu/future/vt-cave/whatis/;
    www.evl.uic.edu/pape/CAVE/oldCAVE/CAVE.html.

[^29]: See www.cave.vt.edu/.

[^30]: See www.es.com/Pressroom/99archive/pr-05-11-99.html.

[^31]: For early uses of VR systems, see Gillilan 1997.

[^32]: Cf. also
    www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Naimark.html#NaimarkText.

[^33]: Cf. Valente and Bardini 1995, p. 313. According to these authors,
    Lanier coined the term in 1987.

[^34]: *Oxford Dictionary of Computing,* fourth edition. Oxford 1995, p.
    95.

[^35]: On the phi-phenomenon cf. Parkinson 1995, p. 7: \"The brain has a
    perceptual threshold, below which images exposed to it will appear
    as continuous and film\'s speed of 24 frames per second is below
    that threshold. Persistence of vision or flicker fusion prevents us
    from seeing the lines between each frame, while the phi-phenomenon
    or stroboscopic effect, analyzed between 1912 and 1916 by the
    psychologists Max Wertheimer and Hugo Münsterberg, provides a mental
    bridge between the frames to permit us to see a series of static
    images as a single continuous movement.\" As applied to VR, see
    Pimental and Teixeira 1995, pp. 108-109.

[^36]: Personal communication from Dean Cundey, a cinematographer
    responsible for *Jurassic Park, Apollo 13,* and other films.

[^37]: On the mission and structure of Simlab see
    www.loria.fr/\~tombre/VirtReal/msg00030.html.

[^38]: Co-author of Loeffler and Anderson 1994.

[^39]: Personal communication of Pompeianist Ann Kolowski-Ostrow.

[^40]: www.zgdv.de/departments/z2/vc/projects/archeo/.

[^41]: www.ics.forth.gr/tourbot/.

[^42]: Heim 1993, p. 133.

[^43]: Cf. Chapman 1991; Cornforth, et al. 1991; Kemp 1993; Sims 1997.

[^44]: For an Internet resource page on metadata see
    [www.ifla.org/II/metadata.htm]{.underline}, which gives the
    following definition: \"metadata is data about data. The term refers
    to any data used to aid the identification, description and location
    of networked electronic resources. Many different metadata formats
    exist, some quite simple in their description, others quite complex
    and rich.\" In the context of contemporary CVR we should generalize
    the phrase \"networked electronic resources\" by amending it to read
    \"digital VR resources,\" some of which may be networked, others
    not.

[^45]: Philology, like all scholarly disciplines, marches on. Maas\'
    work has now been replaced by M. L. West 1973, where differences
    from Maas (e.g., on the matter of signs) will be found. We have
    cited Maas above because his work has a lapidary style that makes
    the applicability of philology to CVR more readily apparent.

[^46]: www.arch.soton.ac.uk/Research/Avebury/VirtualAvebury/.

[^47]: Note that U and V are the same letter (V) in Latin; cf. Ullman
    1963, p. 38.

[^48]: Bernard Frischer had the idea for CVRO and wrote the first draft
    of this article, which is based on his talk at VAST in November,
    2000 in Arezzo. Nick Ryan and Franco Niccolucci made editorial
    comments on and improvements to the first draft. Franco Niccolucci
    added new material near the end of section 3; Nick Ryan in the
    middle of section 4.