Entries by Tone
1995 brought us the V6 head mounted display from Virtual Research, the successor to the excellent design of the VR-4. The V6 doubled the overall resolution while retaining the great optics, field of view, comfort, and ease of use originally found in the VR-4. In addition to improved image quality, the V6 refined many of [...] Related posts:
If you’ve been into 3D still photos for a while, no doubt you’ve come to love StereoPhoto Maker, a great (free) Windows based tool for aligning, cropping, correcting and adjusting 3D digital pictures. But when you’re done fooling with the pixels, how can you share them with the world? Everybody seems to have a different [...] Related posts:
3D is once again the rage. And with it comes an effluence of “new” technology to capture real world 3D. One such gadget was shown at the Maker Faire. From out of USC Film School comes a simple way to shoot 3D with a single DSLR (or any) camera. Watch… then read on… Cool!… Except [...] No related posts.
Sorry… VRtifacts has been pretty slow for a while now. An unintended consequence of enjoying some travel time. Guess I’ll never be a global blogger. I did manage to uncover some tech artifacts in Shanghai. Finally back at my desk. VRtifacts will now resume! Related posts:
For many years, and perhaps still today, the Polhemus Fastrak was/is the reference standard for low lag, high accuracy six degrees of freedom (6DOF) tracking. Used extensively to track head mounted displays and data gloves, this magnetic tracker was used in most VPL systems and all the 1rst generation Virtuality systems. For fun, here’s a [...] Related posts:
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 [...] Related posts:
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 [...] Related posts:
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 [...] No related posts.
First there was Virtual Reality Hair Replacement for Men: Now there’s Air Hair, training to master the art of the cut: Related posts:
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 [...] Related posts:
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 [...] Related posts:
Chris Hand from Leicester Polytechnic offers a delightful history of W Industries, the company who brought us the various Virtuality VR game systems. His history begins in the early 80′s and takes us only to early October of 1991, not long after the commercial introduction of Virtuality’s Series 1000 Amiga based systems. The excerpts below [...] Related posts:
From 1991 to 1996 W Industries Virtuality systems defined the image of VR in the location based entertainment arena. Here in the US, Horizon Entertainment was their sole distributor. W Industries was remarkably innovative with their use of technology, but their “innovations” in finances were not so successful. Arcade operators had a difficult time breaking [...] Related posts:
They say you’re not a true 3D enthusiast until you’ve got a shelf full of red/cyan and green/magenta anaglyph 3D glasses. I’m ready to dump mine in the waste bin, but there’s this little problem; two more shelves of anaglyph DVD, BluRay and VHS movies collected over the years. Soon the studios will start to [...] Related posts:
Build your own LEEP style wide field of view head mounted display optics. Check out the instruction video and parts list below. In the late 80′s and early 90′s wide field of view head mounted displays were all the rage; immersion was everything! The dominant HMD vendors, VPL Research and Virtual Research shared the same [...] Related posts:
There are tons of stereoscopic DVDs and VHS tapes on the market encoded as field interlaced stereo. Also, one of the easiest ways to make 3D video is with a camcorder (NTSC or PAL) and a NuView 3D adaptor (often selling on Ebay for less than $100.) For those of you who want to watch [...] Related posts:
Need a wireless headtracker? Only have $80 to spend? You tend not to lean sideways too much? Read on! Related posts:
Back when VR really had some cred, the Diaspar Virtual Reality Network hopped on the bandwagon. Imagine, if you will, a dial-up service with a feature list, every item containing the phrase “will be”, as in this feature will be available… but when? Yes, its somewhat ironic that the network is named “Diaspar”, as this [...] Related posts:
Taken from Mike Bevan’s excellent VR News, this compendium of upcoming trade shows and conferences relating to Virtual Reality gives a clue to where the real money is: Conferences! Mike lists 30 shows for the 11 month period, April ’95 through Feb. ’96, something like 3 per month, from Hangzhou to Lisbon. As a potential [...] Related posts:
The somewhat short lived “Virtual Reality Systems” magazine ran an irregular column “Bitz and Bytz” subtitled “These news items are excerpts of what happened in the world of Virtual Reality during the past 12 months.” Have a gander at the Spring 1994 Quarterly update. Joining the WATN club: Visions of Reality Vista Controls CyberSense New [...] No related posts.
1992 brought a non-virtual swarm of young and eager students to every VR event (and there were WAY too many) under the sun. Perhaps there were massive show discounts for attendees who were too young to drink legally, but members of the Virtual Reality Alliance of Students and Professionals (VRASP) were everywhere. You’d think this [...] Related posts:
Six degree of freedom (x, y, z, azimuth, elevation, and roll) are hard and expensive to come by these days. Stuff like the Wii remote, iPhone, and Droid only track rotations, not fine position (yes the GPS will find you within +- 10 meters, but I’m talking about millimeters here!) Magnetic tracking schemes dominate the [...] Related posts:
Nintendo’s 1995 Virtual Boy was a whole cartridge based game system inside a desktop-mounted-head stereoscopic immersive display. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi of Gameboy fame, and offered for $180 retail, the market was less than kind. It was withdrawn from the market in less than a year and now can still be found late in the [...] Related posts:
This final segment from AT&T’s 1993 Vision of the Future isn’t too far from what’s happenin’ here in 2010, but 17 years later, AT&T is still not a player. Part1 and Part2 are almost as much fun. Related posts:
Jaron walks us through all eleven reasons, from Gates Envy to Movie Projectors. Strangely enough I agree! The Top Eleven Reasons VR Has Not Yet Become Commonplace Related posts:
