The Australian Great Barrier Reef is a natural wonder of our world and a registered UNESCO World Heritage site hosting 1.5 million visitor-days in 1994/95. Tourism is currently the main commercial use and is estimated to generate over $1 billion annually.(1) With the coming 2000 Olympics in Australia, tourism increases will substantially present a major conservation and preservation problem to the reef. This paper proposes a solution to this problem through establishing a virtual reality installation that is interactive and evolving, enabling many visitors to discover the reef through high quality immersive entertainment. This paper considers the technical implications required for a system based in Complexity: a distributed DOME and CAVE architectural system; a mixed reality environment; artificial life; multi-user interactivity; and hardware interfaces.
['Scot Thrane Refsland', 'Takeo Ojika', 'Thomas A. DeFanti', 'Andrew E. Johnson', 'Jason Leigh', 'Carl Loeffler', 'Xiaoyuan Tu']
Virtual Great Barrier Reef: A Theoretical Approach Towards an Evolving, Interactive VR Environment Using a Distributed DOME and CAVE System