Another trend is that VR technology really starts to penetrate the market. Recent progress in research and development enables more cost-effective VR solutions and it is very likely that DSS will evolve into an important application field because VR techniques offer interesting opportunities for better information presentation.
Compared to the technology leader USA there are much fewer activities in Japan with respect to multimedia based DSS. In this context, multimedia databases and VR as enabling technologies seem to play a dominant role.
(New Dec. 96) Regarding the field of multimedia information presentation in the USA and Japan a similar trend as in Europe towards visualization over the Web can be recognized. Characteristic for the situation in the USA is that software companies are very active in developing such visualization tools. To distribute applications over the Internet as well as the intranet offers an enormous market potential and first commercial products are already available.
(New May 97) The HPCC (Federal High Performance Computing and Communications) Program in the USA serves to conduct long-term research and development in advanced computing, communications, and information technologies. Intelligent user interface technology plays an important role within the program component area dedicated to Human Centered Systems. According to NCO [1997] current research trends in this context are aiming at:
(New Oct. 97) Current activities of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST - under the direction of the US Department of Commerce ) reflect the high market potential of advanced techniques for multimedia information presentation. The Information Access and User Interfaces Division , being part of the Information Technology Laboratory at NIST is concerned with technologies for integrating multiple media and modalities in human-computer interaction in order to allow intuitive, efficient access, manipulation, and exchange of complex information. Through collaboration with industry, academia, and government, the division coordinates and provides evaluation methodologies, test suites and corpora, prototypes, workshops, and standards and guidelines to enable faster transition into the commercial marketplace.
Regarding multimedia information presentation, there is a specific focus on the use of spoken and written natural language as well as three-dimensional information visualization and data exploration using virtual environment technologies. One major goal of these activities is to demonstrate the utility and feasibility of advanced multimedia information presentation to industry and government.
(New Dec. 97) Japan is very active in conducting research in the area of virtual reality (VR) and in exploring different application fields for VR technology. For example, a special research program has been started by the Ministry of Education to carry out basic research on VR. This program includes sub-projects devoted to various topics such as human factors in VR, photo-realistic synthesis of virtual worlds, and an haptic interface device for VR. Another Japanese project focusses on a projection based virtual reality system. CABIN (Computer Augmented Booth for Image Navigation) is an immersive multiscreen display which is similar to the CAVE technology (see Cruz-Neira et al. [1992]) developed in the USA.
Regarding applications, the combination of VR and supercomputing plays an important role for providing advanced interactive simulation capabilities. Practical applications of VR technology in Japan cover a broad range of projects such as a virtual play ground for childrens in hospital, an environmental simulation for urban designers, and using tele-robotics at a construction site. The variety and high quality of VR research and development in Japan is also reflected in the large number of contributions to HCI-97, the 7th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction.
(New Jan. 98) Virtual reality technology (VR) plays an important role within the US National Science Foundation 's new Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure program, which aims to attack large-scale problems of science and engineering. The two recipients in the PACI program are the National Computational Science Alliance (NCSA ), which is led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI ) led by the University of California, San Diego. A major focus of current activities is on virtual environments and collaborative technologies in order to provide end users with collaborative problem-solving environments. The field testing beeing carried out now concentrates on tele-immersion and the development of a persistent collaborative environment.