From: Peter Rothman <prothman@metatools.com>
Subject: Re: HUMAN-FACTORS: A real, customer conceived VR app
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 09:08:14 -0700
Message-ID: <326113EE.2CD4@metatools.com>
Organization: MetaTools, inc.


>Ian (mapleson@gamers.org) writes :
> "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."  
-Ian

Ray Pettit wrote: 
> I agree that the entertainment industry may be the largest commercial
> market for HMD's and that there is a lot of money in that industry.  
-Ray


The largest commercial market for HMD's is not VR entertainment, but
television.  Soon it will be HDTV.

Virtual I/O showed me a prorotype HDTV display at SIGGRAPH that was
probably the best HMD I've ever worn (and I've worn lots), but guess
what...its not inteded for use as a computer display.  If you don't
believe me, call a volume HMD vendor (i.e. Virtual I/O) and see for
yourself.

For now computer gaming and VR are niche markets for HMD vendors and
fairly small ones at that.  The challenge before us is how to go about
changing this fact.

Peter Rothman
prothman@metatools.com