I always secretly suspected that if the Pirates Of The Caribbean ever did break down, the pirates would in fact eat the tourists, and ignite a park-wide riot. Similarly, the Tiki room always gave me the creeps and seemed on the verge of Hitchcock-inspired manslaughter. Don't get me started on the Jungle Boat ride.

Needless to say this concept art for what is being codenamed "Epic Mickey" caught my eye right away. In this vision of the Creepiest Place on Earth, familiar landmarks lie in ruins, storm clouds gather over Epcot, and Zombie Mecha runs amok. But what is this masterpiece, and whose vision is it?

The artwork is apparently by game designer and illustrator Gary Glover and Disney artist Tony Pulham, who worked as the art director on such family-friendly Disney films as Winnie-the-Pooh's Heffalump Movie and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning. Word on the interwebs is that the game is being developed by the Disney-owned Junction Point Studios, and being helmed by Deus Ex maestro Warren Spector.

Rumor has it that the game is being developed for the Wii, and idea of getting to play through something that appears to be Kingdom Hearts-on-acid has me gripping my WiiMote in anticipation.
Oh, Epic Mickey - you had me at dystopian. Check out more amazing Concept Art in the gallery below.

Anxiety Therapy

For years now, virtual environments have been used to treat anxiety problems with exposure therapy. Psychologists treat phobias and post traumatic stress disorder by exposing the patient to the thing that causes them anxiety and letting the anxiety dissipate on its own. But this proves difficult if your stressor is a battlefield in Iraq.

Enter virtual reality. Military psychologists use simulated Iraq war situations to treat soldiers. Other therapeutic VR uses include treating a fear of flying, fear of elevators, and even a "virtual nicotine craving" simulator for smoking addiction.

VR Training Programs

Virtual reality environments have also been used for training simulators. The earliest examples were flight simulators (most of us probably remember "Microsoft Flight Simulator"), but VR training has expanded beyond just that. There are many modern military examples, including Iraqi cultural situations and battlefield simulators for soldiers. Other examples include counter-terrorism, paratrooping, welding, and mining training sims.

Multiplayer Online Gaming

One result of virtual-reality research is the existence of entirely separate virtual worlds, inhabited entirely by the avatars of real world users. These worlds are sometimes referred to as massively multiplayer online games, and the World of Warcraft is the largest virtual gaming world in use now, with 11.5 million subscribers.

Another example is Second Life. The world of Second Life can't really be classified as a game, since the goal seems really just to be to wander around and interact with people, much like the real world. There is even a Second Life Shakespeare Company that performs Shakespeare's works within Second Life.

(Image: The Second Life Globe Theater, from Pathfinder Linden)

The Nintendo Wii

Probably the most successful cousin of virtual reality on the market today is the Nintento Wii. The Wii owes its motion capture and intuitive interaction concepts to the virtual reality technologies of the past. The controller is basically a simplified version of the "virtual reality glove." Both the Wiimote and the Wii Fit offer users another way of interacting with their virtual environment without having to wear any bulky equipment.

(Image: a new take on Wii tennis by Mesq)

Medical Procedures

Modern medicine has also found many uses for virtual reality. Doctors can interact with virtual systems to practice procedures or to do tiny surgical procedures on a larger scale. Surgeons have also started using virtual "twins" of their patients, to practice for surgery before doing the actual procedure.

(Image: the Karlsruhe Endoscopic Surgery Trainer)

Project Natal

The latest entry in the virtual reality inspired gaming world is Project Natal, a new piece of technology under development now for the Xbox. Project Natal proposes a new way of interacting with games, and indeed with computer systems in general. In their demo video, they propose a system that requires no keyboard and no controller, where a user's voice and motions serve as their method for interacting with the system.

The demo video is impressive, but the technology has not been completed and released yet. When it does get released, however, virtual reality will take another giant step towards total immersion and common home usage.

The Cave

The term "CAVE" refers to any virtual reality system that uses multiple walls with multiple projectors to immerse users in a virtual world. The first CAVE was built in 1992 as a method of showing of scientific visualizations. Now, many universities have their own CAVE systems. The CAVE is used for visualizing data, for demonstrating 3D environments, and for virtually testing component parts of newly developed engineering projects.

Today's military robots don't walk on two legs or look remotely human - they mostly look like miniature radio-controlled tanks. There's always a human somewhere with a laptop and a joystick controlling all of the robot's action. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are experimenting with the use of a controller from a Nintendo Wii to manipulate the bots. This gives the soldiers more freedom of movement and situational awareness than if they're staring into a laptop computer. While advances in robot technology will probably result in more radical robot designs and allow for the military's goal of a 30-percent robotic force, there will always be human involvement in the control process. Researcher Bill Smart had this to say about our future robot army:

"It's a chain of command thing. You don't want to give autonomy to a weapons delivery system. You don't want the robot to make the wrong decision."

Image by: Getty Images.

Military use of robots increases. [Washington University in St. Louis via EurekAlert]

My favorite part is that at the bottom of the website where the researchers have these lovelies on display, they have the single strange sentence: "We search man and woman for a commercial." Makes perfect sense. When can I get one, and what games go with it?

Oioo [via Slashdong]

IGN spoke with project lead Feargus Carroll about what the Force will have in store for Clone War gamers. The entire game takes place during the Clone Wars. According to Carroll:

We've taken all the major characters from the TV show and created a brand new adventure for them. The very future of the Republic is threatened by a sinister alliance of Count Dooku and the mysterious Nightsisters – Sith Witches with Force powers and Lightsaber skills. This combination is a huge threat to the Jedi Order, and it is up to the player to uncover the plot and defeat this powerful enemy.

Sith Witches, what to the who now? They are an offshoot from the witches of Dathomir, who share the Jedi Knights' sensitivity to the Force. Our guess is, they're bad because they are labeled witches. The character list includes (as playable characters) Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu, Anakin Skywalker, and Ahsoka Tano.

Both the DS and the Wii will have slightly different stories, but both will allow you to wave your fake light saber about like a mad sith. According to Carroll, the hope is to "give players direct control of the light saber. With stylus control the player can aim the Lightsaber with pin-point accuracy and engage in blisteringly fast Lightsaber duels."

[New Generation and IGN]
http://revoeyes.blogspot.com/2008/06/star-wars-clone-wars-wii-trailer.html

In 1999, under a tenth of American adults over the age of 50 played video games; in 2007, that ratio has reached nearly a quarter. Take this steady upward climb, factor in the fact that video games are getting better and more prolific by the minute, and we're almost sure to have a hard core gamer senior citizen majority by mid-century. Image by the Christian Science Monitor

To Nintendo's Surprise, Wii is Hot With Seniors [Christian Science Monitor]