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Living in a cave could be the way forward

This article is more than 16 years old

Last year saw some spectacular innovations. But for me the most interesting event wasn't how social networks such as Facebook put people in touch with like-minded people around the world, nor the provision of free (global) video calls through Skype, nor even being able to organise your own television channel from a mobile phone (Kyte).

The most memorable moment for me personally in 2007 was walking into an engineering laboratory at University College London, where a team led by Anthony Steed has constructed a CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment). This is a trademark of the University of Illinois, which pioneered this sort of thing years ago, based on Plato's allegory about a cave (tinyurl.com/yq7a98). It is one of about 200 around the world, half of them run by corporations.

It is an ordinary-sized room with three walls, the fourth being left open. After putting on special spectacles (wired to a computer) I entered the room and saw a statue that might have been in the British Museum. But it wasn't a real statue, nor a hologram, but a three-dimensional recreation of one that really did look real. I could walk most, but not all the way, around it as if it were in real life. The only thing that gave it away was that if I touched it with my finger there was nothing there, though apparently they may soon be able to program the computer so it prompts a reaction in you as if you had touched a hard surface. Wow.

Soon after the scene changed to a room in which I appeared to walk between and around chairs and tables as if they were there, though the resolution wasn't quite as fine compared to the statue. There was a door open at the other end leading to what appeared to be a swimming pool. As I got nearer, it looked empty and I was staring over a small precipice, which started to make me feel nervous and a bit dizzy (it has the same effect on Anthony Steed, even though he knows how it works). If I had walked any further on I would simply have bumped my head against the real wall of the Cave.

But what use is all this? The next scenario gave a hint when the far side of the room became a boardroom seemingly stretching three or four yards out into the distance with life-sized representations of people around the table programmed to make all sorts of gestures such as dozing off if the conversation became boring or leaving the room if you got uncomfortably close to them. At the moment they are governed by computer programs, but in the future they could be manipulated by real people, maybe situated elsewhere in the world controlling lifelike representations of themselves. Suddenly the explosion of virtual worlds like Second Life and its numerous successors - all confined to computer screens - starts to look like yesterday's technology.

The UCL team is applying these techniques to current problems such as dealing with phobias, but goodness knows where it will lead in the future. As a bonus at the end, I was shown an application that has already happened. On three sides of the wall (so slightly distorted) they conjured up a huge yacht at sea just coming into a berth. When it stopped I was led into it and given a tour of its many decks, including swimming pools, a gymnasium and an entire deck reserved for the guest of the moment. This was a three-dimensional representation of a yacht that Roman Abramovich was thinking of buying but didn't.

It is not so fanciful to imagine that at some stage in the future, as technology improves and costs plummet, ordinary homes could have a cave doing all sorts of things from watching a truly immersive film to having a dinner party with relatives scattered around the word. Each would have to provide their own food and drink, but the experience and the conversation could be eerily real. I am already wondering what surprises are left for 2008.

vic.keegan@theguardian.com

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