Novosti received details from an ad hoc press center to be active throughout the visit. A virtual sphere has been installed at the Nationale, one of Moscows most posh hotels, in the city heart. "This cutting-edge technological achievement can be used in many functions as Moscow prepares to host the Olympics," says Alexander Polinsky, managing director of the Moscow 2012 bid committee. "3D models inside which one can freely move will be of major help as athletic sites are built or updated, public galas arranged and, most important of all, to blueprint Olympic safety."

IOC inspectors are offered virtual trips to the Juan Antonio S

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amaranch Tennis Center, and a new swimming pool of the Luzhniki Olympic complex even now, though the two projects are to be completed in 2007.

Special cybernetic eyeglasses allow the user, as he walks inside the sphere, to feel part of virtual reality, admire the beauty of the most remote parts of the world, and see nonexistent places.

A Sky Odyssey youth expedition in support of the Moscow Olympic bid has taken start for the Antarctic, reports the bid committee press center. The travelers intend to make huge inscriptions, "peace" and "Moscow 2012", on Antarctic ice. They have with them twenty big rolls of red fabric with them for the purpose. The South Pole will host a mini marathon running race, on a symbolic 2,012 meter distance, to support a bid on which Moscow is competing Paris, London, New York City and Madrid.

Expedition members-urban boys and girls from thirteen to twenty years of age-come from different parts of Russia. To join the venture, all have come through a tough elimination contest at the Cosmonaut Training Center, and climbed Elbrus, the Main Caucasian Ranges highest peak, of 5,642 meters. The six best athletes qualified for the Sky Odyssey.

MOSCOW, March 14 (RIA Novosti)