KNOWLEDGE ADVENTURE WORLDS TECHNOLOGY
TO BE USED IN SPEILBERG/HEINZ INTERACTIVE
PROJECT AIDING SERIOUSLY-ILL CHILDREN

PITTSBURGH, PA (October 3, 1994): Today at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, Steven Spielberg and Teresa Heinz announced their major collaboration for entertainment and communications services. The project will use Knowledge Adventure Worlds' innovative 3-D navigable multi-user operating system, WorldsWareTM. The new project, to be developed by Los Angeles-based Starbright Pediatric Network, will allow children to design their own 3-D cartoon-like representation, which is then transmitted across the Internet or over standard telephone lines to "meet" with other characters.

WorldsWare is a system running on Windows-equipped personal computers that allows users to represent themselves as Digital ActorsTM who move about rooms, buildings, schools, libraries, and open spaces, and interact with each other by typing, gesturing and moving together through elaborately-styled spaces. KA Worlds seeks to establish this system as a standard for the next generation of on-line services, multi-user games, and entertainment products, and they recently announced alliances with major industry partners to embed this technology in other consumer products.

David Gobel, President of KA Worlds, commented that "It has always been one of my dreams to expand ways that people communicate and learn interactively. That's why we developed the multi-user 3-D technology at Knowledge Adventure Worlds. What could be a more worthy way to use this technology than to help sick children -- kids who are cut off from the normal ways of interacting with the world through no fault of their own? Children by their nature need contact with others. They are bursting with ideas and enthusiasm that they need to share with others, and have so much imagination that demands an outlet, that illness should not stand in the way."

"That is why we are so honored to be part of this new partnership with the Heinz Foundation and the Starbright Foundation," added Gobel. "It is providing an exciting new way to build the most important resource that many of these boys and girls have, their spirit. By combining the best insights from entertainment, games and storytelling, the partnership will work to make the computer simulations as compelling and interesting as a movie -- the difference is, the kids are the actors and the story is about them and their families."

The system has the capability to let kids to go to the park, look at the Eiffel Tower from above, fly with some new-found friends to Japan, or simply communicate with their families after visiting hours have ended. Gobel thinks this capability will show how the Information Superhighway can be put to one of its best uses yet.