From: owner-3dui@hitl.washington.edu on behalf of Andreas Simon
[andreas.simon@gmd.de]
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 8:20 AM
To: Anders Backman
Cc: 3-D User Interaction Mailing List
Subject: Re: HighEnd HMD:s ???

Anders Backman wrote:

> 
> We have a Virtual Research VR8 HMD and want a better one.
>  * Higher resolution
>  * Better contrast
>  * Longer cable?
>  * Greater FOV
> 

For the mid-range I feel that the VR8 is already pretty 
reasonable, I liked it for its good all-round behavior 
(for an HMD), so if you move up, be prepared to make some 
tradeoffs. Getting better contrast is not trivial, longer 
cable should not be an issue, in my experience you can 
custom order (for a price). True, the significant nonlinear 
distortion of the optics and (by today's standards) low res
are its downfall. 

I was fortunate to use the nvis Datavisor 80 for a couple 
of days when it came out and I was impressed. The 50% 
overlap was a problem (small 40deg stereoscopic FOV as a 
result, making it hard to use for direct interaction where 
depth is critical, its task-dependent what you need, they 
told me they can do 100deg total with 60deg stereoscopic 
FOV, you have to talk to them about this). Optics are really 
good for that kind of FOV, nice and flat image. The view 
geometry is kinda peculiar, so if you see bad stereo in a 
demo it is most certainly the software screwing up. 
High-res 1280x1024 but its color field sequential, which 
some people find disturbing and can be a problem for some 
tasks. But well its heavy to the degree of beeing unusable 
for normal people (i.e. non-military who are not used to 
wearing helmets) for a reasonable amount of time (> 20min). 
Use a balancing support to hang it from, but wait, then you 
could use a BOOM ;-) . I dont have a quotation but in those 
days it was USD 80k, and if you need it its worth it, if you 
don't it will just sit there. Design is cool though. 

$0.02

Andreas
-- 
Andreas Simon     andreas.simon@gmd.de    02241 14 2838
--