Get Real, Get Virtual

by Jim Murray

Virtual reality. It's one of those buzzwords we've all seen, although most of us can't remember where we heard it first, and very few of us have an idea of just what it means.
Well, for us, VR means Superscape. This is a British company who started life making games for Atari systems, about the time many of today's VR enthusiasts were pronouncing their first polysyllables.
The company's heritage, developing software for tight memory confines, small storage and slow video -- at least by today's standards -- is noteworthy because it explains a few things. For one thing, Superscape VR worlds are comparitively small files, and viewing and navigating in them is noticeably quicker than it is in other VR environments you might have tried.
Even more significantly, objects in a Superscape VR environment can have behaviors associated with them; objects can react when you bump into them, move when you push them and bounce when you drop them. They can even interact with each other, if the designer has chosen. This technology is years ahead of most of the VRML we've been seeing on the Web for the past year or so.
VR is one of those things you have to experience to appreciate, so we invite you to download Viscape (Superscape's VR plug-in -- it's available for both Netscape Navigator 2.0 and greater, and Microsoft Exporer 3.0), and then be sure to check out our cool 3D virtual kiosk!