This week's movie of the week is actually a series of mini-movies that fit together like pieces of a puzzle. They can all be found at the Open Virtual Reality Testbed, a virtual reality project at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

It's worth starting at the Project's home page, because it contains some interesting information: the Project's mission, links to other virtual reality sites, a description of four sub-projects, and a list of the people who work in/with the Open Virtual Reality Testbed.

to the Open Virtual Reality Testbed

If you want to go directly to the moving pictures (you shallow entertainment junkie, you), proceed directly to "Project and miscellaneous fun movies (MPEG)"

to Movie Samples from the Open Virtual Reality Testbed

The first three movies are the most interesting: NIST Walkthrough, Office Tour, and Immersion Study Walkthrough. These MPEG files are large (from 281K to 1.6Mb), so you might want to make plans to occupy yourself during the downloads. (This may be your chance, finally, to start re-reading Silas Marner. Go ahead, give George Eliot another chance.)

If you want to see how these movies fit together, check out some of the smaller projects, which can be accessed from the Project's homepage.

to the Open Virtual Reality Testbed

This testbed site shows a lot of promise; you can almost see how the pieces will fit together once the bandwidth and file-size issues get worked out. If you're interested in digital video and/or virtual reality, put this server on your hotlist; it will be interesting to check it out on a regular basis to see how it develops.