From: Arthur Zwern Subject: Re: PROD: General Reality Introduces New Wide FOV HMD Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 11:17:13 +0000 Message-ID: <337307B2.E0E@genreality.com> Organization: General Reality Company Robin Hollands Wrote: >Is it just me, or has there been a diluting of standards recently :-) >A 45 degree FOV may be wider than GR's standard offerings, but surely >it can't be classed as wide! If memory serves me correctly, visual >immersion i.e. the feeling that one is in the world instead of >looking at a screen, occurs somewhere between 60 and 100 degree field >of view. The CyberMaxx gor close at 56 degrees, but 45 degrees is >nowhere near. That's not to say this isn't a fine a HMD, but surely >it's stretching the truth to call the FOV of view *wide*, especially >if compared to some of the high cost 100 degree HMDs! Robin, we agree that to a VR purist, 45 degrees of true horizontal FOV may not be considered immersive, but there certainly is no "standard" here to be diluted. In reply, it must be noted that for many users and many applications, a feeling of immersion within a 3D SE can be achieved even with a desktop monitor! And certainly can be achieved with a 20 degree FOV and a good tracker. We are sorry if our marketing message offends you, but the CE-200W does provide the widest FOV of any production HMD available at even twice its price. I do not think we should be so "pure" that only a Porsche Turbo can be called "fast", so we will continue to call it a wide FOV device until there is a standard. It should also be noted that after running hundreds of optical ray traces, we have concluded that you can not achieve anything beyond a 45 degree HFOV using conventional optics and a low-cost 0.7" diagonal LCD while still retaining good image quality (do you really like the image in a CyberMaxx?). To go beyond 45 degrees, you must use a larger (typically 1.3") LCD, and you end up with a very good but more expensive solution such as the Virtual Research product line (which still barely achieves your definition of immersion, but at closer to $10,000). Many users just can not afford this. Thus within the universe of "low-cost" HMDs, the CE-200W really is a "wide FOV" device by any reasonable standard of comparison. Like every other product in our industry, the CE-200W is not the ideal Holodeck solution, but represents a trade-off between what is feasible at today's level of technology, and cost of goods. HMD suppliers who have violated the performance envelope allowed by this trade-off have each blown over $20M and failed miserably. We do not want to follow their examples, so we will continue to provide the best possible products we can, at the lowest possible prices, while still maintaining positive gross margins to support our growth. We hope you'll try one soon, and then post your opinions again! Cheers:-) Arthur -- Arthur Zwern, President General Reality Company 124 Race St. San Jose, CA 95126 USA Phone +408-289-8340 FAX +408-289-8258 Arthur@GenReality.com