UNSW's iCinema, an interactive 360-degree, immersive 3-D cinema, has won a Gold International Design Excellence Award (IDEA) for a unique virtual-reality mining safety training system. The award marks another success for an Australian creation that has made an international impact in industry training, education and new artistic forms.

The training system known as iCASTS (iCinema Advanced Safety Training Simulators) provides a series of immersive virtual environment simulators and an interactive control system for group or individual training of employees.

Interactive cinema blurs the boundary between audience and in contrast to conventional cinema where viewers passively watch and listen to a linear narrative in two-dimensional space; interactive cinema allows almost limitless narratives to be created by both viewers and the technology that underpins this medium.

iCinema's technological showpiece is "AVIE" (Advanced Visualisation and Interaction Environment). It is a 120-square metre 360-degree screen that provides the backdrop for a three-dimensional immersive cinema experiences. Driven by six computers, 12 high-resolution digital video projectors and a 26-channel spatialised audio system, it is a cinema-in-the-round like no other.

The audience in an iCinema room stand at the centre of a round screen that has a virtual-reality environment projected upon it. In some simulations 3-D glasses are worn but the immersive effect is powerful with or without them. A "wand" and console are used by participants to navigate the environment. Although there are other 360 degree cinemas iCinema was the first immersive virtual-reality, 3D environment and is also leading with software/products that have applications in the arts, education and industry. The system can be applied in many training situations. See Mining VR

The IDEAs are organised by the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and are the world's premier awards for design. iCinema and the Australian design agency Tiller Design won the Gold IDEA for the design of the 360-degree AVIE. Thirty one entries were recognised with a Gold award from a field of 1,631 international entries. Forty-seven entries received Silver awards and 72 won Bronze awards. The design success was a combination of an immersive 3-D experience and the ergonomics and usability of the control console, which is designed to be intuitive and immediately accessible but not distract from the virtual environment.

The Australian-designed and owned iCinema has achieved recognition at the highest levels of the international design community. But iCinema is also a commercial and technical success story, with systems either sold, or set up in collaborative research arrangements, in Australia and overseas:

MINING: Four training complexes have been established in NSW for mining industry training – at Argenton near Newcastle, Woonoona near Wollongong, Lithgow and Singleton. Mining employees are sent to these facilities for safety training in a benign but realistic environment. This is a multi-million dollar contract with mining industry services provider Coal Services Pty Ltd and NewSouth Innovations, UNSW’s tech-transfer company.

This interactive software program recreates underground mine environments by projecting an "immersive" film in two theatre modes - a 360-degree "AVIE" version for group training, and a 180-degree "iDOME" for individual training sessions.

The AVIE and iDOME theatres were developed by the iCinema Centre for Interactive Research, a joint venture between UNSW's College of Fine Arts and the School of Computer Science and Engineering. Similar safety training packages could be developed for other high-risk industries such as construction, policing and the military.

EDUCATION: iCinema facilities have been established at academic institutions in the United States, Germany and Hong Kong where they form the heart of new research and teaching programs in new media. iCinema director Professor Jeffrey Shaw describes the US installation, at the Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York State, as "a multi-million dollar initiative unique in the whole world".

MUSEUMS: The iCinema team are pursuing an innovative museum project with the Museum of Victoria to put its entire collection of science exhibits into a 3D virtual environment – which able to be manipulated, arranged and edited as desired by the visitor. For an example of what this can look like, see See T_Visionarium - an example of immersive cinema at iCinema's AVIE, which reveals the latest advances in automated video analysis, multi-media search and retrieval and high-density video streaming.

This is an immersive cinema environment where viewers can navigate a three dimensional library of tens of thousands of broadcast television clips, and freely assemble these "samples" into unexpected and emergent narrative sequences. While something like this was fantasized in Steven Spielberg's sci-fi film "Minority Report", iCinema has now made it into a reality.

CULTURAL ACTIVITIES: iCinema facilities have also featured in artistic exhibitions and cultural festivals in France and Spain.

iCinema has been supported by Australian Research Council funding and UNSW funding and is expecting to be self-supporting with its revenue flows by 2012.

Media contacts:Dan Gaffney, NewSouth Innovations, 0411 156 015 or Peter Trute, UNSW Media, 0410 271 826