Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials
The Oculus DK2 is a remarkable VR headset, producing a remarkably wide field of view with very inexpensive single element optics. VRtifacts was curious about the characteristics of the Oculus DK2 lens: what size, what material, and what focal length? The lenses...
Around the World, Game Systems, Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, VR Companies
W-Industries (Virtuality) always seemed to have a PR person riding herd on any video material that was released about the company or products. Everything the public saw was tightly scripted and edited. But… here’s a 1992 video from inside the factory...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials
Here’s a much more detailed tear down of the Virtual Research VR-4 Head Mounted Display, done by one of the engineers at VR sometime in 1994. He shows us how to remove the back light inverter and the main PCB. ‘Scuse the vintage VHS EP mode recording. I...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials
Professional wide field of view Virtual Reality optics for less than the price of a couple of double lattes! A while back I demonstrated a design for Leep On The Cheap, a proof of concept for wide field of view optics on 3″ to 4″ display panels. Trouble...
How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, Stereoscopic 3D
They say you’re not a true 3D enthusiast until you’ve got a shelf full of red/cyan and green/magenta anaglyph 3D glasses. I’m ready to dump mine in the waste bin, but there’s this little problem; two more shelves of anaglyph DVD, BluRay and VHS...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials
There’s been an enormous resurgence of DIY HMDs in the VR hacker community recently, some quite impressive. Understanding how the eye works is the key to these inventions. I found a really instructive 70 year old nugget which gives HMD designers the real...
And All That Hype, Cybersex, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, Position Trackers
At the risk of overstepping any and all boundaries of propriety, here are complete do-it-yourself build instructions for an “incredible” haptic feedback interface for your Atari console. With a bit of soldering and epoxy, you can add force feedback into...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials
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 prisms are quite...
Around the World, Game Systems, Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, Position Trackers
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 VR helmet combined the...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, Stereoscopic 3D
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...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, Stereoscopic 3D, VR Companies
1995 brought us the V6 head mounted display from Virtual Research, the successor to the excellent design of the VR-4. The V6 doubled the overall resolution while retaining the great optics, field of view, comfort, and ease of use originally found in the VR-4. In...
How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, Stereoscopic 3D
If you’ve been into 3D still photos for a while, no doubt you’ve come to love StereoPhoto Maker, a great (free) Windows based tool for aligning, cropping, correcting and adjusting 3D digital pictures. But when you’re done fooling with the pixels, how...
How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials, Position Trackers, VR Companies
For many years, and perhaps still today, the Polhemus Fastrak was/is the reference standard for low lag, high accuracy six degrees of freedom (6DOF) tracking. Used extensively to track head mounted displays and data gloves, this magnetic tracker was used in most VPL...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials
Jeremy Oliver advises how to purchase LCD displays for your next homebrew VR helmet. (Hint: take all your optics to Montgomery Wards and try every TV and camcorder on the shelf!) Jeremy’s less than successful experience with Radio Shack suggests a big thumbs...
Head Mounted Displays, How-To; Teardowns; Tutorials
Build your own LEEP style wide field of view head mounted display optics. Check out the instruction video and parts list below. In the late 80’s and early 90’s wide field of view head mounted displays were all the rage; immersion was everything! The...
