When Virtual Reality Was Always Virtual
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...
Teardown – Virtual Research V6
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...
3D Photo Tools
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...
Anachronistic Technology
3D is once again the rage. And with it comes an effluence of "new" technology to capture real world 3D. One such gadget was shown at the Maker Faire. From out of USC Film School comes a simple way to shoot 3D with a single DSLR (or any) camera....
Shanghai Tech
Sorry... VRtifacts has been pretty slow for a while now. An unintended consequence of enjoying some travel time. Guess I'll never be a global blogger. I did manage to uncover some tech artifacts in Shanghai. Finally back at my desk. VRtifacts...
Setup A Fastrak – Fast!
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...