From: mbernat@gel.ulaval.ca (Marc Bernatchez)
Subject: Re: APPS: VR as Programming Aid
Date: Thu, 15 Aug 96 23:21:13 GMT
Organization: dep. de Genie electrique


>I do a LOT of programming...both for embedded micro-contollers and
>Windows apps.  My programs usually explode into multiple modules (as
>they should) and at a certain point I find my concentration efficiency
>falling off because I'm spending more time maintaining visual
>reference to said modules than time spent actually adding to them.  
[...]

>What I'd really like to see from in VR development is a simple (ha ha)
>extention to the viewing area of the CRT.  A set of goggles,
>obviously.  It would be WONDERFUL if I could have a 180 degree (or so)
>spherical VR display where I could lay out 3 dozen or more pages of
>software and simply turn my head to look at them.  The mouse would
>still work of course and, idealy, a corneal-reflective targeting
>subsystem to replace the mouse would be even nicer. 
[...]

I believe that this will be a reality soon enough. The actual problem
in doing this kind of full immersion virtual displaying is the
technology used to build current HMDs. The resolution has to improve
by a factor of maybe 3 or 4 before you can really think of using a HMD
as a replacement to a PC monitor. There may be a few high-end HMDs
around that could let you do it but they usually are not on the cheap
side and can weight quite a few pounds. This is because these high res
HMDs uses CRT picture generator that are made of glass and other heavy
materials.

The lag factor is not much of a concern here as you basically only
need to map a very wide 2D screen into a HMD and only display a part
of that wide screen at a given time. It can be seen as a big cylinder
shaped virtual screen surrounding you while you display your favorite
windows(tm) apps all over it.

The video card, while it don't need to be 3D, will cry for a lot of
memory...  Think of what it would need to hold let's say a 9000x1000
pixels plane. The refresh rate will also have to be quite high to scan
such a bunch of pixels.  You could just use a 1024x780 capable video
card but then, you would need to calculate and scroll pixels in
realtime... here comes the lag factor again.

I guess you'll have to be patient and wait for the technology to catch
up our fertile imaginative minds ;-)

Bye

 Marc Bernatchez             |  E-mail: mbernat@gel.ulaval.ca
 C.O.P.L. (local plt-00307)  |============================================    
 Dep. Genie electrique       |  http://www.gel.ulaval.ca/~mbernat
 Universite LAVAL            |  http://www.imaginative.com/VResources
 Quebec, Canada              |============================================
 G1K 7P4                     | Virtual Reality is the future of computers
==========================================================================