Like the set of a movie or setting of a video game, this surreal suburban facility could easily be mistaken for a real place at first glance – in reality, the installation is an elaborate artificial environment used by police to simulate complex and dangerous situations (photos by Chris Clarke).

As Geoff Manaugh summarizes the setup, “the barren streets and hollow buildings of this militarized non-place were designed for use as an immersive staging ground for police-training exercises, fighting staged riots, burglaries, bank robberies, and other crimes” including hostage situations and terrorist attacks.

Located in Gravesend, Kent, just outside of London, this strange facsimile of an urban complex is devoid of residents but comes complete with parks, nightclubs, estates, aircraft, trains and tube stations (for hijacking and bombing simulations). Its population, instead, consists of the ebb and flow of the Metropolitan Police, of which the complex accommodate up to 300 militarized participants at one time.

Open “in 2003 to provide London’s officers with firearms and public order training,” the complex’s designers at Advanced Interactive Systems (AIS) “provided all specialist firearms-related design, fit-out of the live-fire ranges with internal ballistic and anti-ricochet finishes, simulation and targetry equipment, and range sound systems.”

The same company was later contracted to “upgrade the specialist indoor shooting ranges and simulation systems [to] feature High-Definition projection systems, additional support for standard issue firearms and less-lethal devices, laser-based 3D virtual training environments, and a course editor for creating bespoke training exercises.” Even these official descriptions lend themselves to a range of dystopian speculation and dark interpretation.

Author of Subtopia, Brian Finoki notes that this dull gray place is deeply bizarre in nature, “a city standing on the planet for one purpose: to be rioted, hijacked, trashed, held hostage, sacked, and overrun by thousands of chaotic scenarios, only so that it can be reclaimed, retaken, re-propped in circuitous loops of more dazzling proto-militant exercise, stormed by a thousand coordinated boots for eternity, targeted by hundreds of synchronized crosshairs of both lethal and non-lethal weapons.”

Photographer Chis Clarke, whose Flickr photo set is worth seeing in its entirety, suggests a bold (albeit perhaps somewhat dramatic) take on the complex and its meaning in the contemporary cultural context of the United Kingdom: “Gravesend can be interpreted as a warning – a prophecy of society’s potential to alienate itself from itself, and kill its collective identity. This surreal installation serves as a chilling account of the death of community in 21st century Britain.”

Feel the wind on your face and smell the pine sap of the forest as you gaze down at the scenery far below – without ever leaving the ground. ‘Birdly’ is a new machine developed by the Zurich University of the Arts that simulates flight using an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, a motor-powered machine that mimics flying movements, a fan to fake the feeling of wind and even olfactory feedback tailored to the landscape of your choice.

The creators studied the movement of the Red Kite bird and translated it to a sensory-motor coupling that enables you to flap your ‘wings’ as if you’re really flying. The movement of your arms directly correlates to the flying sensation you experience through the Oculus Rift headset.

Once strapped in, you’re embedded in a virtual landscape as if you were the Red Kite itself for the closest possible simulation of flight that’s possible without ever actually going into the air. The faster you go, the stronger the air pushed out by the fan positioned right in front of your head.

While it’s easy to imagine Birdly becoming a fixture at amusement parks, so far, it’s just an art installation, with no plans for commercialization. The creators say there are a few tweaks still needed to keep users from getting sick during the flight experience. This device is just the latest in an intriguing line of creations using Oculus Rift to bend reality, like a recent Gender Swap experiment that allows the user to switch to the point of view of someone of a different gender.

Simulating an amazing array of natural environments and phenomena, this dynamic playspace turns ordinary hand-sculpted sand into vividly colorful landscapes in the blink of an eye.

A real and working augmented reality sandbox, the system is designed to help educate students about earth sciences with a uniquely responsive and intuitive interface.

A team of data visualization and earth sciences experts, mainly from the University of California, created the setup using a Microsoft Kinect camera coupled with topographic visualization software and a 3D data projector.

From rough prototypes to its present state, the project has come a long way in terms of the level of rendering detail and response speed.

Tapping into a familiar form of childhood play, the project “allows users to create topography models by shaping real sand, which is then augmented in real time by an elevation color map, topographic contour lines, and simulated water. The system teaches geographic, geologic, and hydrologic concepts such as how to read a topography map, the meaning of contour lines, watersheds, catchment areas, levees [and more].”

Of course, one can imagine an array of applications of this technology beyond classrooms and science museums, from Minecraft-style, construction-centric games to simulators and modeling tools for landscape architects and urban designers.

More about this amazing project: “UC Davis’ W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in the Earth Sciences (KeckCAVES), together with the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, Lawrence Hall of Science, and ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center, is involved in an NSF-funded project on informal science education for freshwater lake and watershed science. The sandbox hardware was built by project specialist Peter Gold of the UC Davis Department of Geology. The driving software is based on the Vrui VR development toolkit and the Kinect 3D video processing framework, and is available for download under the GNU General Public License.”