COLUMN ONE : Playing Around in the Future : ‘Virtual reality’ games, which put the player into the action, are on the horizon. Many firms are ready with the technology, but finding interesting stories is the challenge.

The alarm blaring through the headset is the first indication that an enemy missile is on the way. The radar monitor on the cockpit screen shows it’s closing rapidly. Better take evasive action.

With a tug on the joystick, bank hard left. Wham. Then, with another jolt, bank right. The alarm is still screaming. The mountains are looming ever closer as the plane loses altitude. An electronic map shows the missile still closing. Blam. The plane is spiraling down, and then there’s a crunch. The motion stops. The screen goes blank. “Fatal Impact.”

This reporter, at least, wouldn’t make much of an F-18 pilot.

But then again, practice makes perfect. And if the builders of this flight simulator have their way, nobody will ride just once. The company, a tiny Silicon Valley firm called Magic Edge, aims to fill massive rooms with its machines, which combine state-of-the-art computer technology with an elaborate hydraulic motion system to create a remarkably lifelike flying experience.

In Magic Edge’s vision, squadrons of pilots would battle one another in a carefully crafted, futuristic setting and get some refreshments when they’re done. To make it a family experience, there would be other games, using the same simulator equipment, that would not involve war. The idea is to create an entirely new type of entertainment venue, an electronic theme park that would provide a lively alternative to another night at the movies.

Judging by the number of well-known entertainment companies pursuing similar concepts, Magic Edge is on to something big. At Paramount, Sony, MCA, Sega and a host of smaller firms, engineers and entertainers are joining forces to reinvent what’s referred to in the trade as “location-based entertainment.”

A rich grab bag of new technologies--some born in Hollywood, others filtering out from the computer industry and the Pentagon--is making all this possible.

With giant-screen, high-resolution movies, hydraulic seating platforms that move in response to computer commands, advanced graphics computers, headsets containing sensors and miniature video screens, and movement-sensitive gloves, it’s suddenly possible to create a limitless variety of simulated environments.

Some are passive: You just sit there and soak it all in. Others, such as the flight simulator, are active: You become a fantasy character, shooting down planes or slaying dragons inside a computer-generated “virtual reality.”

Both types of experiences present some fascinating opportunities for Silicon Valley engineers and Hollywood talent alike. Technologists see it as a fun way to exploit their innovations; artists see it as a new way to tell stories. And--need it be said?--everyone sees it as a way to make money.

Over the next decade, industry officials say, exotic electronic attractions will premiere at theme parks, arcades, movie theaters, shopping malls and stand-alone locations all around the world. Jaded couch potatoes, who rejected the charms of the video arcade and the movie theater in favor of the convenience of Nintendo and the VCR, will be lured out of their homes by spectacular electronic experiences, they say.

Interactive electronic games will become “the bowling leagues of the 21st Century,” predicted Stan Kinsey, president of Iwerks Entertainment in Burbank.

Some believe that this new medium will prove powerful enough to serve as the core of a diversified entertainment company. Taking a page from his great-uncle Walt Disney’s book, Tim Disney recently purchased the pioneer in electronic theme parks--a Chicago operation called Battletech--and he is already negotiating a movie deal and a comic-book line based on the Battletech story.

Creating a new entertainment medium does not come easily, though. Several early efforts, including a joint project of Lucas Arts Entertainment and Hughes Aircraft, have foundered. Virtual reality pioneer VPL Research--which had a partnership with MCA--has all but collapsed.

Along with predictable new-technology problems, such as cost and reliability, there are a few novel ones. Nausea, for example: Many simulators leave their patrons looking a little green. Video headsets, which put tiny TV monitors just inches away from the eyes and are wired to respond to head movements, raise the issue of hygiene.

Because of these problems, few of the early electronic attractions will use full-blown virtual reality technology, in which headsets and sensor-equipped gloves are used to provide complete immersion in a computer-generated world.

Instead, most will rely on single- or multi-passenger cockpits, or “pods,” with large video screens, elaborate controls and, in some cases, moving platforms.

Price remains a major issue. Magic Edge expects a spin in its simulator to cost a hefty $30. A one-hour visit to Fighter Town in Irvine, Calif., where players sit in stationary jet-fighter cockpits and duel with one another on computer screens, is priced at $28. Battletech, at $6 to $8, is much less expensive. But even that is not cheap considering that Battletech relies on frequent repeat visits from a loyal cadre of players.

With the cost of computer technologies dropping rapidly, the affordability problem may eventually disappear. But the same cannot be said for what many consider the biggest problem of all: developing innovative games and stories that fully exploit the medium’s potential and make it appealing to a broad audience.

Although war games are a proven draw for teen-age males, they don’t play well with the family audience that electronic entertainment entrepreneurs hope to attract.

“The technology is there, but we haven’t really seen what artists can do with it,” said Keith Schaefer, president of Paramount Communications’ new-technology group. Added virtual reality consultant David Fox: “There has been too much focus on the hardware and not enough on the experience. . . . The danger is we’ll see virtual reality versions of the same garbage: street fighting, karate and driving games. We need a lot more than shoot-’em-up. . . .”

Hollywood studios, of course, see their TV and film libraries as the logical solution to the software question. Paramount, for one, is planning a chain of electronic entertainment centers based on “Star Trek.” Large “Star Bases” and smaller “Star Posts” will simulate different aspects of life aboard a starship, including travel through a transporter. The attraction is being built in partnership with Edison Bros., a St. Louis-based arcade operator, and the game software company Spectrum Holobyte.

The “Star Trek” centers will be based in part on a virtual reality system that uses gloves and headsets. Edison Bros., along with British-based W Industries, has already helped develop one such machine, a stand-alone arcade game called Virtuality: Turn your body left and you see what’s to your left in the “virtual” world; make a slashing motion with your arm to slay the computerized foes.

But Virtuality, although widely applauded as innovative, has serious limitations. The headset is heavy, the graphics are crude and the computer responds slowly to movements.

And adopting the classic “Star Trek” story won’t by itself solve the creative challenge. Developing a “Star Trek” experience that matches people’s well-formed impression of what that world is like could be tricky, notes Jordan Weisman, co-founder of Battletech.

“There are a lot of ‘ifs’ in dealing with such a recognized property,” he said.

That problem hasn’t hindered “Back to the Future,” a movie-based attraction at the Universal Studios theme park in Florida, which might be the best example of a “passive” high-tech entertainment experience. The $40-million facility, now being duplicated at Universal Studios in Universal City, Calif., uses high-resolution film, sound, wind and lighting effects plus sophisticated eight-passenger hydraulic motion platforms to encapsulate people in the strange world of fictional eccentric scientist Dr. Emmett Brown.

“This is the forerunner to virtual reality,” said Terry A. Winnick, who headed development of the attraction and is now responsible for creating new forms of location-based entertainment for MCA Recreation Services. “Our audiences are getting more and more sophisticated, so we have to get more and more sophisticated. Otherwise, they’ll stay home.”

“Back to the Future” was built by amusement park ride companies and not electronics firms, Winnick says. But MCA views its parent company--the Japanese electronics giant Matsushita--as a major resource for future technology-based attractions in theme parks, malls and stand-alone centers.

Two small Hollywood companies, Iwerks Entertainment and Showscan, are also using high-resolution film and motion platforms to create “virtual” rides. One of the Showscan films, for example, features a truck race across a desert. The brilliant film image is taken from the vantage point of one of the trucks, and the bumps, skids and turns on the screen are exactly matched by the lurching of the padded bench seats.

Iwerks is now pushing a concept called Cinetropolis, which will offer virtual reality games, film simulators, technology exhibits--even a restaurant and a nightclub--under one roof.

“This is the third-straight down year (for movie attendance)--people are staying home,” noted Kinsey. “We’re after that movie-going demographic. We’ll really antiquate the movie experience as it is now.” The first Cinetropolis is scheduled to open in the fall, says Kinsey, but he won’t provide details.

Most entertainment companies, in fact, are extremely secretive about their plans for using new technologies. The Walt Disney Co.’s fabled Imagineering group, responsible for theme park rides, won’t discuss the subject at all, although few doubt that the company has big plans. It has already edged its way into the arena with the popular “Star Tours” attraction at Disneyland, a film-based simulator that takes patrons on a tour of the universe portrayed in the “Star Wars” movies.

Sony Pictures is similarly hush-hush about a location-based entertainment project now under way on its Century City lot. But sources say the company is considering opening an urban electronic theme park in Manhattan. Sony also is said to be working with its Loews affiliate to see how high-tech attractions could be integrated into movie theaters.

There’s plenty of interest outside Hollywood. For the major arcade game manufacturers, notably Sega of Japan, virtual reality is a logical next step. Sega already is helping to build electronic theme parks in Japan, Singapore and Britain, and is developing a variety of single- and multi-passenger virtual reality “pods.”

Even Hughes Aircraft, building on its military simulator business, is getting into the electronic entertainment game. Although its joint development effort with Lucas Arts Entertainment has broken down, the aerospace firm is now marketing the product of that collaboration--a simulator pod called Mirage. (The two leaders in computer graphics technology--Evans & Southerland and Silicon Graphics--are each lining up with one or more of the entertainment companies.)

Yet the presence of giant corporations has not discouraged the entrepreneurs. Tim Disney, for one, plans to reverse the direction of the Hollywood food chain by developing a story around an electronic attraction and then spinning off the concept to movies, books or TV shows.

The starting point was Disney and his partners’ acquisition late last year of a controlling interest in Virtual World Entertainment, the Chicago company that developed Battletech, for a price estimated by sources at more than $20 million. Battletech players sit in a mock cockpit, assume the controls and persona of a robot, and fight it out with other players. The entire “experience” includes a “pre-show,” in which the players learn the story behind the fight, and a “post-show” in which the battle is reviewed and scored.

Disney, 31, says the idea to get into electronic entertainment came out of an informal brainstorming session in the kitchen of Charlie Fink, a friend and former movie producer at the Walt Disney Co.

“We were talking about the entertainment industry and thinking: ‘We’re young guys, what are things going to look like 15 years from now? The mall six-plex may disappear; it won’t offer anything you can’t do in your own home. The studios will make ‘event’ movies to be shown in big palaces, but there will be some other type of software in a social setting.”

Their plan involves opening a chain of centers, each featuring Battletech and another game called Red Planet, and using them to generate a much broader set of entertainment products and services.

“Disney has movies, television, theme parks, retailing, all of them promoting each other,” Disney said. “(We’re) negotiating a multi-picture movie deal and a comic-book line. We’re trying to create two things: a distribution network and a software studio.”

Battletech co-founder Weisman, who remains with the company, is adamant about the primacy of the story over the technology that’s used to present it. Some competitors prefer to emphasize the power of the hardware, but most believe that for the next few years--at least--there will be plenty of room for experimentation, with companies testing various concepts and raising public awareness about the medium.

Back in the Mountain View, Calif., laboratory where the Magic Edge simulator is going through its paces--the egg-shaped capsule is high above the ground as it’s twisted and turned by a hydraulic arm--company founders Donald L. Morris and Michael P. Chan are excited and nervous about the prospects. The Silicon Valley veterans have been working on the machine for more than three years, and they’re sure they have the best technology around.

To succeed, though, they know they’re going to need more than just a flight simulator. They need big-money partners. And most of all, they need stories. For when Hollywood and Silicon Valley get together, what they’re selling to the public isn’t computers. It’s entertainment.