By: Bruce Geryk Designed By: Dan Maronn Introduction Many people once believed that virtual reality would become the ultimate gaming platform. Players would immerse themselves in a life-sized, fully 3D environment, where they could interact with other people and objects, and initiate realistic games. And many have imagined using Star Trek's holodeck - a place where crew members enter a simulation to engage Klingons in hand-to-hand combat training or play all kinds of sports. Recently, an X-Files episode called "First-Person Shooter" featured a VR-game storyline complete with an action game's big-barreled guns, tanks, and plenty of shooting. In the episode, Mulder became trapped with digital foes until Scully rescued him with... a machine gun. Although these images of virtual reality pervade our pop culture, the implementation of VR is still the stuff of dreams. However, that is not to say that engineers shouldn't try to pursue the ultimate, despite prohibitive costs. Computer and game technologies – specifically stunning 3D-accelerated graphics – have greatly and rapidly improved. Thus, the possibility that developers may be able to port popular computer games to a fledgling virtual-reality platform is not so distant. Click to enlarge The research into virtual environments has already begun. For example, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign recently built a facility called the Beckman Institute to house and encourage interdisciplinary research. When high-tech and science collide, it's often hard to predict the result. One of the virtual-environment projects in development at this new facility is nothing less than the world's most powerful gaming platform. Curious about the state of VR gaming, GameSpot talked with Paul Rajlich, a research programmer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, which occupies space in the Beckman Institute. Rajlich took the computing power at his disposal and in his spare time ported a virtual-reality version of Quake II to this system. Next: To the bat CAVE!