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<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />In the low-slung basement of the Hyatt Regency <br />in San Francisco, Nonny De La Peña, a <br />documentary filmmaker, was fitting a helmet and <br />goggles onto a woman dressed in a skirt and <br />sweater. De La Peña carefully arranged the long <br />cables extending like an umbilical cord from the <br />oversized goggle headset to a computer. <br />The woman removed her glasses, ready to plug <br />in to a virtual reality re-creation of a crisis at a <br />food bank line where supplies run out. As a <br />result, a man waiting for food goes into a <br />diabetic coma. <br />In real life, people at the Hyatt attending the <br />Online News Association annual conference <br />could see animated images on the screen as <br />they walked by. <br />Behind the helmet and goggles, another <br />experience played out, a virtual world created to <br />immerse people into a nearly all-too-real scene. <br />De La Peña, a former Newsweek <br />correspondent, wanted to make people feel the <br />need behind hunger -- "What it's like for people <br />when their last chance is gone." <br /> <br />The instinctive reaction to "Hunger in Los <br />Angeles" is to reach out and help the man <br />flailing on the ground or yell at the insensitive <br />food bank worker. People have pulled out their <br />cellphones ready to dial 911. <br />"It's very visceral," De La Peña said. <br />Behind the seamless panorama playing out in <br />the game was San Leandro-based studio, <br />PhaseSpace, housed in a vast warehouse near <br />Home Depot off Davis Street. <br />PhaseSpace specializes in the motion capture- <br />technology that is like a skeleton beneath the <br />effects that make the character and landscape in <br />"Hunger" so lifelike. The company's engineer, <br />Kan Anant, was at the controls at the ONA <br />conference. <br />PhaseSpace motion-capture technology has <br />been used on everything from music videos by <br />the Black Eyed Peas and Gnarls Barkley to the <br />S AN L EANDRO L AB P HASES PACE M AKING V IRTUAL <br />R EALITY A H OUSEHOLD R EALITY <br /> <br /> <br />November 25, 2012 <br />By Angela Woodall <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />San Leandro, CA