From: mapleson@cee.hw.ac.uk (Ian CR Mapleson) Subject: Re: HUMAN-FACTORS: A real, customer conceived VR app Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 08:46:02 GMT Message-ID: Organization: Dept of Computing & Electrical Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Scotland In article <1.5.4.32.19961003215317.0068b2b0@connecti.com> Ray Pettit writes: >This message concerns the ongoing discussion of the usefulness of >virtual reality technology to solve real world problems. ... You guys (and I basically mean all the 'professionals' posting here) have never really accepted that the *largest* commercial market for VR systems, especially HMDs, is the entertainment market. You might not like that fact, perhaps because entertainment still isn't considered 'serious' in many quarters, but that's the way the real world is. If the route to successful VR lies in cheaper systems, then the entertainment market must be exploited to the full. Within a year, there are going to be some 4 million people with N64's who'd *love* to get their hands on a decent VR helmet. This is a *big* market (I'm not counting the M2, PSX II, etc., so the actual number will be much higher within 3 years) and is the best way to get a _high quality_ VR helmet into production. Gamers will not buy a poor quality helmet (by that I mean any helmet that cannot support colour resolutions as high as 640x480) so this is your chance to solve many problems at once: - produce a high quality low cost *proper* stereo HMD - get the possibilities of VR known in a wider public - make a *heck* of a lot of people very happy. :) - reduce side effects and public backlash from introduction of VR (a good helmet will cause fewer side effects). - etc (many other things you can think of in your own time :) Who will take up the challenge? Whoever it is, for heaven's sake get a move on (btw Linda, I emailed you a while back - did you get my message? Is SGI going to venture into HMD production?). >The fire service industry is always looking for better ways to train >firefighters. With the high cost ($1 million +) and low flexibility >of live fire burn room simulators and increasingly tougher EPA >regulations, the US Air Force turned to the VR industry in hopes of >improving their training options. They wanted to help bridge the gap >between multimedia training and the expensive, and dangerous, >alternative. We saw this as an excellent application of immersive >technologies and proposed a system that would meet their needs. I was contacted by a fire service who were interested in using the Doom graphics engine and an HMD for fire training. I told them to use Quake instead, which is now out. So where are the HMDs? You guys have yet to deliver. Division promised one, but nothing showed. Nintendo were going to ship one *with* the N64, but backed down (bad mistake. They spent the money on the VB instead. What a waste). >We can't infiltrate the world with VR technology tomorrow, but there >definitely are customer driven VR applications that solve real world >problems. By some peoples' definitions, we already have infiltrated the world with VR technology, ie. via console systems like the N64. Btw, as some have pointed out, you may get better training results by using a good wraparound immersion screen, rather than an HMD. Ian. The Doom Help Service (DHS): http://doomgate.gamers.org/dhs/ SGI Network Admin, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, England, PR1 2HE. mapleson@gamers.org | Tel: (+44) 01772 893297, Fax: (+44) 01772 892913 "There is no magic, only stuff." - Nakor, "The King's Buccaneer" (R.E. Feist)