The Trial The Trail is a virtual reality (VR) drama with intelligent agents acting as characters who lead the human participant through virtual locations, moral choices and emotional states. The story-scape is a surreal quest, sometimes funny, sometimes disturbing: imagine Tarkovsky's Stalker crossed with Alice in Wonderland crossed with Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Two characters, Patofil and Filopat, introduce themselves and join with the participant in a series of absurdist challenges. The participant's reactions are logged, interpreted psychologically, and affect the characters' behavior, the presentation of further challenges, and the ending. The Trail The Trial builds on our previous experience building dramatic VR, The Thing Growing.

The Trial The Trail is designed for a CAVE or CAVE-like, tracked, immersive VR system. 3-D stereo displays with one large screen or multiple screens form a virtual theater. The project is a collaboration between the VR Studio in the Dept. of Media Study, and the SNePs Research Group in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at UB.

The Trail The Trial  is a sister project to Human Trials  a networked virtual reality drama where human actors play the parts of Filopat and Patofil.

Collaborators: Josephine Anstey, Dave Pape, Stuart C. Shapiro,
Anthony Ekeh, Albert Goldfain, Mike Kandefer, Paul Visco,
Trupti Devdas Nayak, Orkan Telhan,
Vikranth Rao, Chris Galbraith, Sara Nohejl, Amit Makwana

Software: Ygdrasil, Performer, CAVElib, Maya, SNePS, GLAIR, MGLAIR

updated Sep 05