Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    It's a neat concept, and if the resolution is good enough it is capable
    of all of those things.  The problem is the computing that is required
    to give realistic images.  Even a souped-up Amiga can take hours of
    ray-tracing to compute a single frame.  To run this in real time you'd
    need a Cray, or a CPU per pixel.
        John Sauter

most of this is from alt.cyberpunk and much of the concepts that are being 
implemented have roots in the cyberpunk SF sub-genre.

There are two main components to the reality, (besides the computes) the 
videophones and the dataglove.

The dataglove provides input (via an rs232 I believe) as to hand and finger
movements.

The videophones have a 600x200 color LCD display for each eye.  (Also I believe
the headset can detect head motion, ie turn left right up down etc.)

Autocad Inc. has been working with JPL/VPL to create a commerical product that
allows you to step inside of your CAD drawings.  The implementation shown
at Siggraph was in the matrox booth.  It was done on a 386 pc with one matrox
graphics/processor card for each eye.  I didn't have an opportunity to demo
it since the line was VERY LONG for it.

If you have questions that Autocad might be able to answer you should ask 
in alt.cyberpunk or alt.cyb-sys since some of their programmers read those
groups.

They did mention that they have a raquetball game :-) working though.

brad

    I saw an article in _EE Times_, an issue in July, which describes much
    the same thing .0 refers to.  The implementation was far enough along
    to show at the SIGGRAPH conference held the beginning of this month in
    Boston.  This work derives from a NASA project described in _Scientific
    American_ perhaps two years ago.
    
    Autodesk, a CAD software company, has come out with "virtual reality"
    software they are calling "Cyberspace."  (No flames from science
    fiction readers, please -- I'm just the reporter.)  Basically the
    software computes stereo graphics images which are fed to LCD screen
    goggles worn over the head.  There is also a sensor glove which
    can sense individual finger movements, and the whole setup can sense
    head and arm motions.  The effect is that you can look around and
    move around in the artificial space, and grasp and move objects
    there.
    
    At SIGGRAPH, this software was running on a Silicon Graphics
    workstation, and the demonstrator was playing a game of virtual
    racquetball!
    
    Also, to bring this back to Amigas, Matrox had the same thing running
    on a fast AT-class PC with two video cards.  Ordinary conference-goers
    could try it out after waiting in a l-o-n-g line.  The graphics
    were relatively crude, but people were at home enough after a couple
    of minutes in the virtual space that they would do things like pick
    up an office chair and drop it in the swimming pool, or throw a
    book out of the roofless virtual room.  Others flew around (by pointing
    their index fingers) in fancy maneuvers.
    
    In other words, the illusion was crude but effective.  But the problem
    for personal computer owners is not the computing horsepower.  The
    wired glove and LCD goggles are each several thousand dollars apiece.
    Using 3-D spectacles to look at an Amiga screen would probably not
    be satisfactory, as the illusion depends a lot on the view tracking
    head movements.
    
    It looked like great fun.
    
    Wes

    I heard an news item on the radio which described  "virtual reality",
    the 3-D goggles and the the data glove.  I was foaming at the mouth! I
    wanted it!  I figured the goggle were no big deal, just two display
    (albeit very small ones) with a little software to offset the image a
    little.  The data glove was a little tricker, but it could plug right
    into a serial port (if the data rate was low enough) or a parallel
    port.  In essence, the data glove is just a sophisticated mouse that
    points in 3-D instead of two, right?  The motion sensors that went into
    the glove would have to go into the goggles, too, to track head motion,
    but still no big deal...
    
    Then I heard the price tag... "What do you MEAN, a quarter mil!"
    
    Then I got my blood pressure back under control and I had two
    thoughts...
    
    Thought 1:  If we are talking about a quarter of a million dollars for
    a system, why stop at goggles and a Michael Jackson glove?  Why not
    have a binocular video camera track the operator and have a front end
    process the image picking out key features such as the outline of both
    hands, the headset, torso, etc.  It doesn't strike me as particularly
    difficult to accomplish if the operator is willing to wear gloves with
    dayglo stripes or whatnot...
    
    Thought 2:  The Amiga workbench ui paradigm seems well suited to being
    adapted/adopted to this "virtual reality."  Maybe "vr" isn't a toy but
    a much more powerful ui for getting real work done.  Imagine opening a
    drawer for real!  Imagine finding a "piece of paper" in one of your
    drawers and putting it into your "typewriter" (or your voicewriter
    maybe???)  And you can have much more available to you since you only
    need to turn your head to see more objects, so you can spread things
    out a bit.  You could literally reach into your back pocket and pull
    out a scientific calculator, or your spreadsheet, or...
    
    Next, wire it into a network with video capacity and voila', you're 
    talking to talking to another person in the flesh, virtually.
    
    
    I want it!!!
    
    
    John B.

    re .4
    
    This puts to mind the concept of reading a book while lying in bed
    where you don't have to turn the pages or even touch the book. 
    Or turning my head and seeing a reference text that I need appear
    in the air at the page I have asked for.  Portions of the reality
    could be stored on CD rom for static images like the book to be
    read or the reference.  Also this would beat the hell out of using
    the little displays on the portable machines.  Or how about games
    like the old CD Dragons lair where only parts are interactive? 
    How about viewing large documents as books while using a word
    proccessor to type it in?  Or veiwing a large flowchart in it's
    entire form and zooming in on the section you want.  Of course 
    some of this will require higher resolution however this may well
    be the future.
    
    	As for the price tag these are still prototypes and computing
    power is growing.
    

Re: .2

alt.cyberpunk?  A newsgroup dedicated to ultra-tech stuff?  Where do I sign up?
This wouldn't happen to be available on the EasyNet as a notesfile, would it? 
You know, the way comp.sys.amiga is?  Or does anyone know if DEC has any
notesfiles dedicated to ultra-tech discussion.

Re: .rest

I agree!  When I heard about this, the first thing that came to mind was "Wow! 
Wouldn't that give an extra edge of realism to Dungeon Master!  No more
point-and-click to get an object.  Now you just reach out and pick it up."  I
wonder how long it'll be 'til someone comes up with a cheaper version of this
interface.  

Couple this with the breakthroughs being made in neural networks and you've
could potentially get a system which you can talk to, which can talk back in
near-human english, which can begin to understand what you WANT to do, etc.  I
can't wait to see what's available for the home market in 5 years!

					John 

    
    I'll settle for the new Star Trek Holodeck.  You need more than
    just fancy graphics to do it right, you need to affect all of the
    senses.
    
    Maybe you get by with crude graphics if you suppliment it with sound
    and smells.  Remember F18's start with the drop from a high altitude
    down to the deck of the carrier, with the sound of the wind whistling
    past? (if you had >512K)
    
    -Dave

    
    re -.2
    
    alt.cyberpunk *used* to be archived, but interest and disk space
    dropped off so I had to can it.  You'll have to use VNEWS or XRN to
    read alt.cyberpunk.  
    
    brad