Planet and city scapes

eSCAPE

Tom Rodden
University of Nottingham
tom@comp.lancs.ac.uk

The first year of the eSCAPE project set the foundation for the development and construction of a number of electronic landscapes. The work since then has focused on bringing together the lessons learned in the first year from a variety of disciplines, and putting the concepts to work in a variety of settings.

Two speculative new interfaces have been developed, namely:

• A virtual planetarium inside the EVE dome, a 20-foot projection dome. World Wide Web information is projected onto the inner surface of the dome, and people inside can experience and explore the virtual world.

• A distributed legible city. This is a shared virtual environment where inhabitants can pedal around the city using cycles. The shared-environment display uses both projected screens and head mount displays.

The environments of the first year have also been put to work for everyday citizens within specific applications. This work has focused on the development of the following two demonstrator applications for identified communities:

• A library information space for a local library. This information space exploits the lessons learned in the development of abstract electronic landscapes and the construction of the 10dencies piece. It allows on-line users to explore the contents of a library and find resources within it. A series of ethnographic studies and user trials supported the development of the facility by giving us better insight in how it is used.

• A community information display for the Morecambe area, which builds upon the virtual cityscape work. It allows for the presentation of local information that can be accessed and used by on-line visitors to the virtual information centre. Work on this has involved the development of a shared virtual environment that exploits eSCAPE techniques. The needs of the user community were identified on the basis of a series of ethnographic studies.

eSCAPE web site: escape.comp.lancs.ac.uk/

Pedaling the distributed legible city