Archives for “How-To”

There’s been an enormous resurgence of DIY HMDs in the VR hacker community recently, some quite impressive. Understanding how the eye works is the key to these inventions. I found a really instructive 70 year old nugget which gives HMD designers the real lowdown. All the way from 1941 to you…. If you find this [...] Related posts:

  1. It’s All In Between The Eyes
  2. How To Buy LCDs (in 1995)
  3. Low Cost VR For The Virtual Hacker


From 1993: “Now you can go to Radio Shack, buy what you need, and build it yourself.” Robert Suding and the Virtual Reality Special Report provide specific instructions for building a stereoscopic HMD for $435. Interestingly the optics and prisms are quite similar to the V-Rtifacts “Leep On The Cheap” design. Read the plans in [...] Related posts:

  1. Teardown – Virtual Research V6
  2. Build Your Own Fluid-based Prismatic Stereoscopic Goggles
  3. Take Flight in the Virtual World


If you look yourself in the eyes, you’ll start to realize that your eyes and your head are different than anyone else’s. The spacing between your eyes, known as the interpupilary distance is about 65mm, but this varies from 50mm to about 75mm, depending on who’s eyes you’re looking through. Also the position of your [...] Related posts:

  1. Nothing New Under the Sun!
  2. Teardown – Virtual Research V6
  3. Tearing Out the Guts of a Virtual Research VR-4 Helmet


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:

  1. Tearing Out the Guts of a Virtual Research VR-4 Helmet
  2. Retrospective photo review of Forte VFX1 Virtual Reality system
  3. How To Buy LCDs (in 1995)


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:

  1. 1995 Virtual IO I-Glasses
  2. Teardown – Virtual Research V6
  3. Liquid Image MRG2.2 Disassembly and Potential Upgrades


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:

  1. Dump Those Silly Colored 3D Glasses
  2. Build Your Own 3D Shutter Glasses Controller for Field Interlaced Stereoscopic Viewing


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:

  1. Build Your Own Fluid-based Prismatic Stereoscopic Goggles
  2. Build a 2 DOF Wireless Head Tracker – Cheap!


Need a wireless headtracker? Only have $80 to spend? You tend not to lean sideways too much? Read on! Tweet [Tercüme etmek] Related posts:

  1. Ascension Technology SpacePad 6DOF Tracker Teardown
  2. Build Your Own 3D Shutter Glasses Controller for Field Interlaced Stereoscopic Viewing
  3. Build Your Own Fluid-based Prismatic Stereoscopic Goggles


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:

  1. Anachronistic Technology
  2. Build a 2 DOF Wireless Head Tracker – Cheap!
  3. Teardown – Virtual Research V6