DATE: Friday, November 14, 1997             TAG: 9711140582

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: SUFFOLK                           LENGTH:   56 lines

VENTURE TOUTS VIRTUAL HAMPTON ROADS TOUR

Imagine you're a business visitor from Hong Kong.

In Hampton Roads for the first time, you've landed at Norfolk International Airport and you're searching for a spot to build your Fictitious Fantaz sports car assembly plant.

What do you do?

Rent a car? Hail a cab?

Not if Mariah Vision3 Entertainment Inc. and the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center have anything to do with it.

The entertainment company and the company that specializes in transferring military technology to the private sector announced a joint venture this week that could take the Asian auto executive from the Virginia Beach Oceanfront to the cotton fields of Southampton County without ever leaving the airport.

VMASC and Mariah Vision will pursue developing a ``SkyTour Hampton Roads'' prototype, said Thomas Mastaglio, executive director of VMASC. At the airport, visitors to Hampton Roads could climb into a six-passenger helipod set onto a ``freedom proprietary motion base'' and tour all the areas of interest in Hampton Roads.

SkyTour is the flying version of Mariah's core simulator system based on live interactivity. The technology for the project is already in the company's simulator system used in Mariah's virtual reality concept for hockey games and race car simulators, said Elizabeth Fredericks, a spokesperson for Mariah Vision.

SkyTour Hampton Roads could be used to promote the economic development marketing of the region, including office and industrial parks, cultural attractions and high-tech capabilities.

But the potential for the self-tour technology is even greater, Mastaglio said.

``I would envision a couple of things - a virtual vacation,'' Mastaglio said. ``You could travel through a computer data base and say, go to Manhattan. You could say, `Let's go see what's in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.' You could see all of the entertainment sites.''

Mariah Vision, a company that only recently located in Suffolk, produces interactive film technologies, specializing in the entertainment industry.

VMASC is an Old Dominion University-led cooperative venture between business, government and academia.

``This takes us into a whole new application area - and that is entertainment,'' Mastaglio said. ``We've targeted transportation, health care and business applications. Mariah came to us. It's very exciting.''

The entertainment and the academia partners will venture with the technology for the first time next week to Orlando, Fla., for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, where they are hoping to attract attention as well as financial backing.

No cost estimates have been made. ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing courtesy of VMASC

This artist's illustration represents a prototype six-passenger

helipod that would provide a virtual tour of Hampton Roads.

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