As a geographer, I have struggled for years trying to teach students to visualize what an environment is like using only flat maps and photographs. A flat map is a wonderful tool for looking at spatial patterns, distributions and relationships, but it does little to convey how the physical landscape and the mapped phenomena relate to each other. Two dimensional images such as maps and photographs can convey what an area looks like, but nothing is as good as actually being there. Not being there is the problem. How can an entire class be transported to remote locations throughout the world without sending an entire school district or university department into bankruptcy? How can the relationship between topographic relief, land use and people be visualized and studied in a manner that is understandable? The answer, potentially, is Virtual Reality (VR), a low cost, second-best way to experience an environment without actually traveling to the site.
Virtual Reality is an emerging technology that produces an "environment that is indistinguishable from reality" in which the user can experience a place or an environment without actually traveling there. VR provides direct sensory input affecting most senses: sound, sight and touch. It was born in the mid-1960's and its development is advancing at breakneck speed today. (Lee, 1992; Schroeder, 1995)
The term "Virtual Reality" is broadly used and widely interpreted. (Isdale 1993) On the internet, VR is generally interpreted as artificial spaces that can be navigated in three dimensions and "feels" real. You don't need special glasses, but rather special computer applications which allow the online data to be viewed in 3D. To those with access to high-end interactive graphics systems which include head mounted displays for visual simulation, headphones for stereo sound and data gloves that sense movement in the hands, VR is a computer interface that allows users to move through computer-generated images in three dimensions. An architect could "tour" a building he/she just created. An archaeologist could walk through a village that existed thousands of years ago. A geography student could visit the Gobi Desert, the Himalaya Mountains or perhaps the gulf coastal plains of Louisiana and "experience" the differences among environments.
VR cannot replace a field experience. It cannot infuse a student into an environment that has all the sights, smells and feeling the real location has - although technology is advancing at such a rate that soon even this may be possible! What VR can do is create an experience that helps students better understand a place, a people, a process.
At the University of Missouri, I teach a basic map interpretation course for undergraduates which covers basic map concepts such as vertical exaggeration, profiling, contour line interpretation, etc. Like thousands of other educators, I have devised ways to graphically and two dimensionally explain these concepts. It works, but it is static and doesn't show the concept in three dimensional space.
This past semester I became interested in Virtual Reality and began developing a series of modules that could be used to assist in teaching topographic mapping and vertical exaggeration concepts in a three dimensional environment.
Being frugal, I purchased a low cost software package called VistaPro to create some preliminary models to use in class. Vista Pro is a three dimensional landscape generation program that uses Digital Elevation Model (DEM) files. It is available in both PC and Macintosh format and has a street cost of about $65. Armed with this software, DEM data and a high end computer, I began to develop fly-through modules of various areas in the United States. As I progressed, I enlisted the aid of several computer graphics specialists at the university. With their assistance, we created the following series of fly-through modules which illustrate a variety of ways VR can be implemented into the classroom.
The first example is a quicktime movie of the island of Maui in Hawaii.
It was developed using VistaPro and U.S. Geological Survey DEM
data downloaded from the internet. The data was reformatted using a
specialized utility program called MakePath that is included with VistaPro.
The texture or colors used to portray land cover in this example are artificial.
VistaPro allows the user to render landscapes based upon a color palette,
elevation data and other features such as trees, snow, lakes and rivers.
The movies created with this package can be easily shown in class using
an overhead projection system or could be placed on a server for students
to view and work with in a lab environment. Because of download time, the
example included with this paper is only a small portion of a longer 3D
fly-though that was created to illustrate terrain in Hawaii.
#2--CENTRAL MISSOURI-Teaching Vertical Exaggeration- 1.5 MB
Teaching the concept of vertical exaggeration using a two dimensional chalkboard is not an easy task. The second example uses a 15 minute x 15 minute block of data cut from a DEM file of Central Missouri. The vertical scale has been exaggerated 10 times, therefore, the Missouri River bluffs which, on average are fifty to sixty feet high, look as though they could be major peaks in the Rocky Mountains. A 10X vertical exaggeration is excessive in this situation. In class, I show in succession a 1X, 5X and this 10X exaggeration. I have students discuss the differences in each and evaluate where, when and how vertical exaggerations can be properly used.
This fly-though was created on a Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) Onyx Computer. Multigen 14.2 was used for database development and Perfly, a Performer Runtime Library created the fly-through module. This database and its associated texture file were designed to be used in a VR equipped classroom. The instructor can actually "fly" the students (who are wearing 3D glasses), through the landscape turning left or right, gaining or losing elevation to analyze and discuss physical features, locations and the effect vertical exaggeration has upon the landscape.
The texture, or overlay graphic, file used in example #2 is a scanned
orthophoto quadrangle map. Color was added using Adobe Photoshop. Many
of the software applications that create fly-throughs (such as VistaPro)
allow the user to create fictionalized landscape textures. As a geographer,
I constantly strive to make my work accurate and although fictionalized
landscape textures can look great, they do not present a true picture of
the location. Many sources of actual landscape images or textures do exist.
Aerial photographs, digital orthophoto data, satellite images all can be
overlaid on the terrain data. Unfortunately, present limitations on texture
file size (about 16 megs in the software application used) makes these
sources unusable. For example, a digital orthophoto file of a midsized
county in Missouri is around 11 gigbytes of data! I am sure technology
will solve this texture file problem soon. But for now, scanning and manually
coloring orthophoto maps seems to be a second-best alternative because
it provides an accurate rendition of the landscape, it is plannimetrically
correct, and it can easily be registered on the database.
#3--CENTRAL MISSOURI-USGS Topographic Map Visualization- 1.2 MB
The third example shows a 1:100,000 USGS topographic map overlaid on the digital elevation data. This short movie demonstrates how textures can be any image - even a simple map. In the VR classroom, the instructor can illustrate how contour lines form "v's" along streams; how road cuts and other human changes in the landscape can impact topographic relief; or perhaps how urban growth occurs in relationship to elevation and natural features. The purpose of this short movie is to only show the educational potential VR can have for geography instructors teaching topographic mapping.
Carl Sauer, a sage geographer, wrote that geography is best learned through the soles of your boots, not the pages of a book. I don't think anyone could dispute his wise words even today. But for many educators, taking a class into the "field" whether it is to a park near the school or on a trip down the Amazon, has become almost impossible. More and more classes are tied to the classroom because of transportation, liability or simple cost factors. The emergence of VR and the ability to access information, whether it is graphics, textual, or realtime via the internet or other technologies, is impacting education in ways we only could dream about several years ago. Our challenge now is to figure out how to use the information wisely and how to effectively integrate it into the educational arena. Much research, testing and analysis is needed. The vast frontier of exploration never seems to diminish in size. Whether it is exploration of the virtual world itself, or the exploration of how people learn using this new technology, new worlds are constantly being created.
The purpose of this column is to explore these new worlds and their impact upon education. What new technologies can be applied towards improving learning? How can these be integrated into learning modules? And finally, do these new developments help improve learning? Hopefully this tiny niche in cyberspace can be used to investigate new educational technologies, strategies and concepts.
RESOURCES
Aukstakalis, S. And Mott, M. (1996) Transforming Teaching and Learning
through Visualization. Syllabus March:14-16.
Berger, Peter, Paul Meysembourg, Jim Sales, and Carol Johnston. Towards A Virtual Reality Interface For Landscape Visualization
Isdale, Jerry. (1993) What is Virtual Reality? A Homebrew Introduction
Lee, Jeremy (1992, July 16) Implementing Virtual Reality
Schroeder, Ralph. (1995) Learning from Virtual Reality Applications in Education. Virtual Reality 1:33-40
United States Geological Survey 1:250,000 Scale Digital Elevation Models. URL
Vistapro 3.0. Virtual Reality Laboratories, Inc. 2341 Ganador Ct. San Luis Obispo, CA 93401.
ADDITIONAL INTERNET VR RESOURCES AND DEM DATA SITES:
Chris' s VR Stuff:
Dynamic Terrains
Project, University of Central Florida,
Human
Interface Technology Laboratory
This directory
contains the 1:250,000 scale Digital Elevation Models (DEM).