From: Robin Hollands Subject: Re: PROD: General Reality Introduces New Wide FOV HMD Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 18:54:20 +0100 Message-ID: <3378AACC.1665@shef.ac.uk> Organization: Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield Arthur Zwern wrote: > > 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! > 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'm not offended - just bemused! > 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 HMD... This is a very reasonable argument. However, the fact that it is difficult to economically achieve a field of view in excess of 45 degrees is surely no reason to semantically define that as 'wide'. And the argument is still only valid for stereoscopic HMDs, surely? A monosocopic HMD has the luxury of using only one screen, and much simplified optics, and could easily achieve 60 degree FOV whilst using a low-cost, large LCD. There is no criticism of the General Reality product implied or intended. Indeed, I have not even tried it (although I've tried other HMDs with a similar FOV). I'm sure the quality is identical to the rest of GR's extensive range of products. My query is simply one of semantics. Based on GR's HMDs, presumable the FOV taxonomy goes something like: 20 degrees: Normal FOV 40 degrees: Wide FOV 60 degrees: Very wide FOV 80 degrees: Very very wide FOV 100 degrees: Very very very wide FOV 120 degrees: Very very very very wide FOV 140 degrees: Very very very very very wide FOV etc... (Just kidding, Arthur 8^) ) Cheers, Robin P.S. Yes, I did like the CyberMaxx 180's image for applications that needed a wide FOV. For applications that needed greater acuity I simply switched to a different HMD (i-glasses!, to be specific) Email: r.hollands@sheffield.ac.uk WWW: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/staff/rjh BOOK: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/vrhmhb