IT SOUNDS like the stuff of science fiction, but the Japanese Government is quietly throwing huge financial and technical weight into the development of three-dimensional, virtual reality television.

If the Communications Ministry succeeds in its ambitions, sports fans throughout the nation will be able to enjoy the 2018 World Cup final as if they were on the pitch itself, surrounded by the sights, smells and sounds of the real action. The ministry, fondly pretending that the final will feature Japan and Brazil, has even drawn up artist’s impressions of how fans will be celebrating goals in their living rooms — cartwheeling with joy in the midst of life-sized, live holographic images of the real players doing much the same thing.

The idea is to replace the traditional box in the corner with virtual reality projectors that will be placed on the floor and fill Japanese living rooms with high-definition, three- dimensional images that can be viewed from any angle. The Japanese Government is collaborating on this vision with leading academic researchers and some of Japan’s most advanced technology companies, and The Times has obtained an interim report from the Communications Ministry’s “ Universal Communications” study group detailing the work in progress.

Three-dimensional images apart, the ministry wants to develop the ability to send thousands of different odours through the new television to enhance the sense of reality.

Its plans also call for the “recreation of tactile sensations”, a hitherto elusive concept that would give viewers the ability to reach out and “feel” what they were seeing. Current projects are working on electrical stimulation for the fingers, ultrasound and air pressure.

If the project is ever to leave the drawing board, a vast range of technologies need to make the leap from the status of being “good ideas” to being “everyday products”, the project’s technological director said. For example, the ability to produce live three-dimensional images would involve rigging thousands of miniature high-definition cameras throughout a sports stadium.

But even the most optimistic government planners admit that many of the required technologies do not yet exist, or are in extremely early stages of research.

The ministry is to seek an initial budget of around £5 million for 2006 to co-ordinate the sort of research required to make virtual reality TV a genuine commercial possibility. A large part of that will involve basic research, to be carried out in universities, on human neurology and the way that all five senses reach the brain.

The director said: “This is not a vision that can be achieved by any one company alone: to make it come true we need dozens of companies and academics working on how to overcome the obstacles in our way. It is also clear that this level of collaboration can only be achieved if the Government is supporting the scheme.”

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