Call it the military-entertainment complex. The aerospace and entertainment industries, which in the past inhabited parallel universes even as they sat side by side in southern California, are starting to cross-pollinate, bringing a new level of technology to entertainment and perhaps returning dividends to the Pentagon as well.

I have spent the past few weeks conducting an in-depth investigation into the products of what sci-fi author Bruce Sterling calls 'the military entertainment complex'. OK, so I've been playing video games.

Hollywood wants to get into multi-media, even if few there understand what it is. Computers can deliver interactivity not possible before. The main moves so far have been towards new graphically -sophisticated computer games and Location Based Entertainment (LBEs). These were important at this year's Siggraph computer graphics convention in Orlando, Florida.The process has been helped by western military funding drying up with the end of the cold war. The switch of resources from battlefield simulations to theme park rides was described as the beginning of a new 'military-entertainment complex'.