Jeremy Oliver advises how to purchase LCD displays for your next homebrew VR helmet. (Hint: take all your optics to Montgomery Wards and try every TV and camcorder on the shelf!)
Jeremy’s less than successful experience with Radio Shack suggests a big thumbs down, but what did I know; my first DIY leveraged their Pocketvision-27 (still wondering about models 1-26?)
And now I’ll turn the podium over to Jeremy:
Dear Dreamer and Garage VR Enthusiasts:
DO NOT USE LCDs from the Sega GameGear and/or the Atari Lynx. They are not NTSC compatible. The GameGear can be made NTSC compatible with the TV tuner that is an accessory sold separatedly but you will find that you are paying more than for most pocket LCD TVs in the market. Besides if you went ahead and use a pair of Sega GameGear as viewers for a HMD, I am sure that you will be displease by the coarse resolution. The Atari Lynx has more res than the GameGear but it is still inadequate for VR immersion.
Using a pair of VictorMaxx Stuntmaster would work but the resolution is even worse.
When did we first get a clue that VR might not fully live up to its promise? The National Academy of Science’s “Committee on Virtual Reality Research and Development” roster is a non-virtual who’s-who of the VR world circa 1994. They certainly “got it!”
SUBSTANTIAL TECHNOLOGY GAP EXISTS BETWEEN WHAT IS
VIRTUAL, WHAT IS REALITY (Sept. 20, 1994)NEWS FROM THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
WASHINGTON — Despite the enthusiasm surrounding virtual reality (VR) — three-dimensional computer-generated worlds with which people can interact — a substantial gap exists between the technology available today and the technology needed to bring virtual environments closer to reality, concludes a National Research Council committee in a new report.* If the federal government vigorously pursues a broad-based program of research on virtual environments, telerobotics, and augmented reality, it could lead to many cost-effective applications that will go well beyond those now available in the entertainment industry.
Trust the folks at G4 to bring us the real scoop on state-of-the-art VR from the inventors of the assembly line, Ford Motor Company. G4′s reportage AND Ford’s VR applications are both impressive; both the MSM and GM/Chrysler have something to learn here. G4 traditionally (is that an oxymoron??) sticks with the latest video games and gadgets on Attack of the Show, but at Ford they seem to have out done GTA. Watch!
First there was Virtual Reality Hair Replacement for Men:
Now there’s Air Hair, training to master the art of the cut:
VR today is like early TV: it suffers from the split personality of most start-up high-tech industries. At the one end is the top of the line research, carried out by institutions with no mandate to sell anything. At the other end, we have new hardware and software products whose developers are only too happy to demo them at a plethora of VR conferences, but where the differences in product are less important than the similarities. It’s like having a VCR and no movies to rent: who needs it? Virtual Reality will continue as the domain of media hype until its supporters and developers start to pay closer attention to the content of what they put out.
Ira Meistrich in Pix-Elation Issue Vol II No II
17 years later, is the situation drastically transformed? Perhaps not. In many ways 1993 was the golden age of VR, not only because the systems were truly immersive (e.g. wide field of view HMDs), but there were some complete VR experiences, especially from W Industries. OK, maybe it was the bronze age, not the golden, but it seems like we’re now back in the stone age. What happened? And… does anyone remember what a VCR is?
Yes, I’ve heard rumors of bugs (lice) inside VR helmets (untrue!), but researchers in Spain are bloody Kafkaesque, putting virtual cockroaches all over the screens. They “got the bright idea to simulate hoards of cockroaches swarming over insect-phobic volunteers…”, showing that “roaches could skitter, wave their antenna, and even change size from small and medium to hideously large.”
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