From: broehl@coulomb.uwaterloo.ca (Bernie Roehl) Subject: Re: REV-PROD: VirtualIO iglasses! Date: Fri, 1 Sep 1995 10:10:40 -0400 Message-ID: Organization: University of Waterloo In article <424o75$csq@cisunix1.dfci.harvard.edu>, Edward J. Holupka wrote: I am looking for a suitable HMD. I have looked at >vitrual-iO 's i-glasses! and they have faxed me some info on them. >However, I get the impression that the glasses are really "toys" and >not suitable for developement for a serious project. I certainly wouldn't classify the low-cost HMDs as "toys". Their suitability depends on the needs of your application, but they can *definitely* be used for serious project development. Don't let the low cost fool you. >I am concerned about the iglasses IO interface. They use the serial port of >the PC. Wouldn't connecting to the ISA/EISA bus be alot faster? For tracking, speed isn't *that* big an issue. Let's say a packet is 30 bytes, and you're getting 30 updates a second (I've just pulled those two numbers out of the air). That's 900 bytes per second, which is less than 9600 baud. >Plus I didn't get the impression that one could develope actual virtual >worlds on them. Is it indeed possible to view 3D perspective images in >the HDM? Yes, you really can see (quite good) stereoscopic images in the HMD. >For example, each monitor of the HDM would have a slightly >different image Right. That's a *good* thing. >In addition, passing information about the head position (tracking) would >also have to go through the serial port. "also"? Ah, I think see where you're confused. The rendered images from the host computer are sent to the HMD as *video* signals (typically from a VGA card); it's only the *tracking* information that gets sent via the serial port. >Given the complexity of >creating and interactively viewing a virtual object I find it >difficult to believe that all this can be handled through the serial >port. It's not. Hmm... Depending on the kind of important project you're working on, you may want to find someone locally who can handle a lot of the hardware issues for you. It will leave you free to work on the "idea" end of things, while they handle a lot of the interfacing and other technical issues. Bernie Roehl University of Waterloo Dept of Electrical and Computer Engineering Mail: broehl@sunee.uwaterloo.ca Voice: (519) 888-4567 x 2607 [work] URL: http://sunee.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl