Navigating the Virtual World;
Interactive, Adventure Travel Simulations
In 2005, Google Earth (earth.google.com) brought global travel to the desktop, enabling the masses with a means to fly to anywhere in the world and have a look around. And the view is real: satellite imagery and aerial photography draped over a 3-dimensional mesh of terrain data. Extreme topography looks as big as life in areas like the Himalayas, Machu Picchu, the Grand Canyon...
Urban
canyons too. A growing number of city structures are modeled in Google
Earth, enabling users to fly between buildings and put themselves on street
level, seeing sights similar to what they's see if they were really there.
See for example, this screenshot from Google Earth showing Boston Common.
Also in 2005, Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games attracted a record number of subscribers. Games like World of Warcraft™ (www.worldofwarcraft.com) enables participants to catch rides on the backs of griffins and fly from mountaintop villages, over misty pine valleys, to quaint harbor towns.
Right
now 100s of thousands of the five million WoW subscribers are wandering
environs of Azeroth. As a subscriber, you interact with others by, yes,
sometimes picking fights, but more often for beginners, exploring, asking
directions, negotiating transportation, and even checking-in at the local
inn.
Exploration is such a big part of playing WoW that 3rd-parties have created map plug-ins to help beginners with navigation. The World of Warcraft has its own coordinate system, which players use to reference locations like: where to find an important game character, a large mineral deposit, or other point of interest. Players may also broadcast a help call to team members with a plea to come to a particular coordinate in rescue.
... So what does Google Earth™ and Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft™ have in common? Answer: Both are desktop vehicles for Virtual Travelers, and both signal the coming of real adventure travel simulation software for a new bread of location information consumers.
It sounds strange to say, but adventure travel is becoming more of an indoor activity. Instead of spending leisure time watching TV, more people are browsing the earth, going on quests, and gaining worldly experience from the comfort of home computers with broadband internet connections. These virtual travelers are using computer simulation to explore the real, and the fantasy worlds, gathering information about locations that are interesting to them. Because, just as knowing which train stop to get off at is essential to having a good travel experience, knowledge of your surroundings in the virtual world is equally important.
The concept of virtual travel is nothing new. Sites like Virtual Tourist ( www.virtualtourist.com ) provide member created web pages with photographs, comments, travel tips and detailed reviews. Web site visitors can click through the site collecting information from forum posts and articles, putting together personal travel guides. While sites like Virtual Tourist provide a gold mine of destination information, they are not really a vehicle for virtual travel.
Combine the interactivity of a multi-player game with the realistic visualizations of Google Earth and you're on your way to creating the next level of virtual travel - Adventure Travel Simulation - total emersion in the visual environment of an arbitrary destination with an interactive means to exchange location information.
Imagine a simulated trip to Boston, landing in the Common, and searching out someone to ask, "Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Paul Revere's House?"
Now imagine yourself on the other side of the conversation. Do you tell them the coordinates and a suggested route? Or perhaps your mischievous nature sends them on a misadventure? Or maybe you prefer not to interact, pretending that you do not understand their language.
People want good information when traveling in the real world and in the virtual world. No one wants to be misled when precious few vacation days or computing hours are at stake.
Web
sites like Travel by GPS (www.travelbygps.com)
provide Global Positioning System (GPS) waypoints and tracks for real-world
travel adventure, but the data could just as well be used for travel planning
and simulation. Take closer look at the screenshot above which shows the
route of the Boston Freedom Trail downloaded from travelbygps.com and
overlaid on Google Earth imagery.
With today's rapid development of software technology, it seems a foregone conclusion that adventure travel simulation software will soon be available. And that's a good thing: Being able to "go" somewhere without leaving your comfy chair would give you an advanced look at what you might see if you actually did go, and based on what you "see" in travel simulation, you might change your plan and go a see something else. So perhaps the cost for Travel Simulation software could be reconciled with the fee airlines charge to change your itinerary.
Perhaps of even more value: the sense of mobility the elderly and infirm would experience with travel simulation software - freedom to explore the seven continents without the hassles of commercial transportation and inconvenience of being separated from family and medical care.
To explore the real world, or the virtual world, you don't really need to know where you are going. But to insure a safer and more enjoyable trip to a specific destination, it would be a good idea to obtain reliable location information. Because a route calculated without local knowledge might lead you to an encounter with unsavory characters...
...then again, that just might be the sort of adventure you're looking for.
* * *
Note: The screenshots images from World of Warcraft and Google Earth are protected property of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and Google, Inc., respectively. Permission to use these images has been requested.
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