VirtuSphere brings virtual a bit closer to reality

Nurakhmed "Ray" Latypov and his older brother Nurulla, working together in Moscow, were seeking a way to enable a person to walk, run and even jump, crawl, dive or roll -- all while remaining safely in place. In physics terms, they wanted to create an endless moving plane.


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Kaizen Taki demonstrates how VirtuSphere simulates the action of walking at the University of Washington's Human Interaction Technology lab in Seattle.

Why?

The Latypovs were trying to enhance the experience of soldiers, firefighters, bomb squads, SWAT teams and even gamers, teachers and architects, all of whom are starting to use technology known as virtual reality for training or entertainment.

Virtual reality -- already a $42 billion market, according to one research firm -- involves projecting computerized images of a room, building, campus, city or imaginary world onto a computer monitor or a tiny screen directly in front of the eyes.

Ideally, participants in virtual reality feel they're actually inside a different environment, so that if they turn around, they see the view behind them, and if they run, the foreground approaches more quickly.

But that ideal is compromised when participants can't physically move within a virtual environment. Often they're simply staring at screens. What's missing is a sense of immersion.

Simple treadmills can't eliminate that shortcoming, because they allow only forward motion, and the occupants must constantly monitor their location to avoid tumbling off.

Several other approaches also fall short, including an omnidirectional treadmill and a layer of shifting tiles underfoot to simulate walking.

In 1996, Ray conceived of a lightweight sphere, big enough to hold a person inside and mounted on wheels that would allow it to rotate freely. No matter how the occupant moved or how quickly or in which direction, the sphere would rotate to accommodate the motion.

About 12 months later, the brothers and 20 assistants produced a prototype VirtuSphere.

"It is truly unique in its ability to provide full-body motion in an immersive experience, where you can affect and change things," said Alexey Palladin, chief executive of Redmond-based VirtuSphere Inc. (pronounced "virtue sphere").

The VirtuSphere is 8 1/2 feet in diameter and weighs less than 500 pounds. Made of latticed ABS plastic, so it can be seen and heard through, it sells for between $50,000 and $100,000, depending on the software shipped with it.

The sphere rests on a base of 25 supporting wheels that pivot in every direction, and it cannot be knocked off that base from the inside, no matter how violent the occupant's motions.

The brothers patented the sphere's method and construction, so the 20-person company is the only maker of such spheres, Palladin said. It breaks down into 32 small pieces, fits into a small car and can be assembled in four hours with a power screwdriver.

The VirtuSphere is entered through a circular hatch, and most people acclimate to the motion within 20 minutes, chief test pilot Kaizen Taki said. Once the hatch is closed, the occupant dons a head-mounted display that projects an image onto a small screen in front of the eyes. It's connected wirelessly to a personal computer outside the sphere.

Sensors under the sphere bring the horizon closer to the occupant with every step forward. If the occupant walks backward, the horizon recedes. Thanks to a key portion of the display made by VirtuSphere, if the occupant turns his head left, right, up or down, what he's seeing on the display shifts accordingly.

Walking forward brings a visitor toward a tennis complex designed by the Moscow government in its bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. Turning left allows wandering around the rest of the proposed two-kilometer campus in downtown Moscow -- just as Olympic committee members did when viewing Moscow's proposal.

The city didn't get the games but plans to build a smaller tennis center anyway. Architects and construction teams will use the VirtuSphere to help their work, Palladin said.

And once it's built, if things should go suddenly and dramatically wrong, the sphere and its software can help again. Palladin with a keystroke drops an oversize submachine gun into a lower corner of the screen, pointed toward the lawn in front of the building.

"This also lets law enforcement and medical first-response teams model situations that can occur in this vast public space," Palladin said.

VirtuSpheres have been sold to 12 customers so far. The biggest market is counterterrorist organizations and the military. The company also is trying to sell to firefighters, educational institutions and gaming arenas.

"We want to move away from the current models of training, where most operators sit in front of a PC and think they're learning," he said.

"When they get into a 'real' environment, where you're wearing a hazmat suit and you have to cover 200 yards to get to your hazardous material and then affect it and then get the hell out of there, that's a totally different thing."

The Office of Naval Research, in Arlington, Va., last month took delivery of an oversize VirtuSphere -- big enough to contain a Marine with a five-day pack and full weaponry.

"The hypothesis is that it will significantly enhance training Marines," especially in on-the-ground combat techniques, Cmdr. Dylan Schmorrow said.

At the University of Washington's Human Interaction Technology lab, doctoral candidate Ruth Fruland is researching using the sphere to improve educational experiences and help people resist the debilitating effects of Parkinson's disease.

Palladin, who started the first home-computing and gaming magazine in the Commonwealth of Independent States, said he met Ray about 15 years ago, then kept in touch and came on board at VirtuSphere late last year. He was a general manager at Intel and Microsoft in the interim. The company has just over $1 million in funding, most of it private and $250,000 from local angel investors.

The market for simulation products and services hit $42 billion in 2003 and will reach $78 billion by 2008, according to market researchers CyberEdge Information Services Inc.

Palladin said he's leaving as chief executive Dec. 1 to head a local stealth-mode startup that he said "will affect billions of people worldwide." Ray Latypov, who will become interim CEO, said he believes the future is bright for his invention.

As graphics get increasingly sophisticated, virtual reality will become more important, and the VirtuSphere will be well-positioned to battle for part of that marketplace, he said.

P-I reporter Dan Richman can be reached at 206-448-8032 or danrichman@seattlepi.com.

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