Don't like to travel? See world via virtual reality

Just as Russell Baker once noted that all real reporting is investigative reporting, I believe that all real writing is travel writing. Every good author takes you on a real or fictional voyage to a place you have never been.

But there is also an important literature of staying at home. Ivan Goncharov's slothful 19th-century hero, Ilya Oblomov, can never figure out a reason to leave his bedchamber. In J.K. Huysman's 1884 novel "Against the Grain," his protagonist embarks on a trip from Paris to London, but gets sidetracked at a Parisian pub that serves roast beef and plum pudding. Savoring the British ambience ("Was he not now even in London, whose aromas and atmospheres surrounded him?"), our man never makes it to the train station. "What is the use of moving," he asks, "when one can travel on a chair so magnificently?"What use indeed? Why spend hours bouncing around in some ill-riveted, flying cattle car only to be gunned down by local soreheads at the foot of the Pyramids? Now, thanks to modern technology, you will soon be able to go everywhere, without having to travel anywhere at all.

I first learned about the Virtual Heritage movement at a flashy demonstration of Silicon Graphics' Infinite Reality computers. Using software developed by Italy's Infobyte, I "toured" St. Peter's basilica and even flew to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

A similar installation is now in place at the new Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where visitors can take a virtual reality tour of the Emperor Trajan's forum, digitally "reconstructed" by archaeologists from UCLA and Northwestern University (www.aud.ucla.edu/bill/trajan.html). As it happens, this is the only chance you will have to visit Trajan's famous meeting place, which was mostly flattened by an earthquake in AD 850.

One of the purposes of Virtual Heritage is to restore sites that have been lost, like the forum. But another aim is to keep people away from monuments deemed "at risk" from human visitation. Infobyte (www.infobyte.it/catalogo/ uk/vr/titoli.html) is now working to re-create the pharaohs' tombs, which can no longer accommodate the hordes of tourists who want to tramp through them. A company named Connected PC (www.connectedpc.com) can take you on a fly-around tour of Virtual Stonehenge - and simulate solstice sunrises - saving you the cost and the discomfort of the trans-Atlantic flight.