Head Mounted Displays
Low Cost VR For The Virtual Hacker
From 1993: "Now you can go to Radio Shack, buy what you need, and build it yourself." Robert Suding and the Virtual Reality Special Report provide specific instructions for building a stereoscopic HMD for $435. Interestingly the optics and...
Yea, though he has walked through the Valley of Silicon, he fears no evil. Jaron Lanier’s rebound…
"Inside Jaron Lanier is a precocious eight-year-old who got together with some friends and built a spaceship," wrote Howard Rheingold in his 1991 book, Virtual Reality, the definitive history of VR to date. "Now he wants us all to take a ride...
MRG 2.2 In The Movies
From the 1995 made for TV B movie Evolver, check out their head mounted display of choice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb09abgOno8
Vuzix Wrap 920 Augmented Reality Hands On
Virtual Research VR-4 Adapted For Stereoscopic Augmented Reality - circa 1993
Back In The Day – Japan 1990
Based on a mix of US and Japanese technology, this brief news segment shows a vibrant VR community in 1990 Japan. There's gloves and HMDs from VPL, although the LCD displays inside the helmet are from Sony Japan. There's also a nice augmented reality...
Night vision goggles of Red Army!
Suddenly, I found the information that USSR army, just before World War 2 developed electronic head-mounted infra-red night-vision goggles for tank crew! It is not exactly a virtual reality subject, but nevertheless it's early days of...
A Day In The Life
Scenes from a typical day in the virtual world of tomorrow: You wake up and attend to your daily bathroom rituals, which unfortunately will never be replaced by any virtual reality process... Thus, after your real world morning ceremonies are...
Why Big Helmets Still Rule
Size matters! If you ask the manufacturers of Head Mounted Displays over the past 15 years, they would echo that mantra, but it's SMALL size that they're boasting. Indeed, those tiny little eye glasses size VR displays look cool (from the...
Mnemonic’s MRG2.2 Upgrade – Augmented Reality + Kinect
Several months ago I shipped off an MRG2.2 to Mnemonic in the Ukraine. He said he wanted to do a few mods and some experimenting. Little did I know that he would put together a totally sweet augmented reality system, where the view inside the...
And I’m Never Going Back To My Old School
Two snippets from the old, old school of VR, circa 1991, pitching a reputable UK firm - Division (acquired by PTC in 1999.) Featured are a couple of helmets from VPL Research using LEEP optics and cloth/velcro enclosures. One HMD appears to have been...
It’s All In Between The Eyes
If you look yourself in the eyes, you'll start to realize that your eyes and your head are different than anyone else's. The spacing between your eyes, known as the interpupilary distance is about 65mm, but this varies from 50mm to about 75mm, depending on...
State of the Art…Sadly
Over at Meant to be Seen 3D, in answer to a forum post looking for the perfect HMD, board vet, cybereality took the time to respond in depth... Money quote: Well, sadly to say it, you will probably be waiting for a long time. There is nothing I...
Siggraph ’95 – Upon Further Observation
Who can remember doing all their 3D animation in MS-DOS? Back in the day, there was Gary Yost's 3D-Studio (not Max!) licensed to and supported by AutoDesk. Now, who remembers creating stereoscopic animation with 3D Studio? VREX had a great little plugin...
Flight Helmet – Redux
IMHO, the Virtual Research Flight Helmet was, and still is, the ultimate head mounted display, except of course, it needed modern high resolution LCD panels. Otherwise, it had incredible field of view, great ergonomics, and unbeatable LEEP...
Retrospective photo review of Forte VFX1 Virtual Reality system
Forte VFX1 was the most advanced, complex and expensive consumer VR system that appeared on the market during VR craze in mid-nineties. Introduced in 1995, VFX1 was in the shops all around the world in 1996. [scrollGallery=id:1;] Hardware...