Surrogate travel is the ability to at least partially experience the effects of travel without actually incurring the time, expense, hassle, or hardships of actually making the trip yourself. Traditionally, we've engaged in surrogate travel by reading travel books, magazines (e.g., National Geographic) television shows, video tapes, slide shows, and lectures. The opprtunity in front of us is to use the power of computers and communications networks to experience the sights and sounds of real-time high-bandwidth multimedia trips.
Sure, we have world-wide webcams, but they are too low in bandwidth, rarely have audio, and are not usually controllable by the individual.
The goal is for you to hop in front of a computer screen and experience the same sights and sounds as if you were there, where there is any place in the world.
The goal is to get to true 3-D hi-res video and directional stereo so that you can move your head and hear as well as see what is there in various directions.
A fixed (but hopefully controllable) video camera is a minimum, but a robot-based camera that can move (rove) around is preferrable.
Standard TV video quality is simply not acceptable, other than for prototyping systems. Even HDTV is not enough. I read that Sony is developing a 10 mega-pixel camera... THAT would produce a video experience that would be truly compelling. Providing that comparable audio was available.
Surrogate travel does not have to be real-time and user-controllable. For example, low-budget users could tag along on trips that someone else is controlling. They could also view recorded trips. A recorded trip could have multiple paths that the viewer could select from. Most viewers do not need absolute real-time, but everybody wants high-quality.
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Updated: January 30, 2006 08:45:02 PM -0500
Copyright © 2002 John W. Krupansky d/b/a Base Technology