From: pepke@SCRI1.SCRI.FSU.EDU (Eric Pepke)
Subject: Re: do-it-yourself "verminals"?
Date: 8 Nov 90 21:01:34 GMT
Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them

It's probably not a good idea to use the Sony B&W Watchmans, because (1) 
you don't want to have KV in front of your face, (2) most of the tube 
would have to hang down below the eyes or stick up above them, and (3) 
binocularity would be dependent on the amount and linearity of scan, which 
would be dependent on a voltage level that might fluctuate.

I looked at a few 2" and 2.5" and 2.7" color LCD displays, but I don't 
think they will be sufficient either.  They don't seem to be big enough to 
provide enough peripheral vision with a reasonable power lens.   Instead, 
I think one of the 4" color LCD's would be good.  I haven't been able to 
find a source for the screens themselves.  Everybody I ask just says, 
"they're Japanese."  (Sigh.  Doesn't anybody in this country love the 
smell of burning phenolic any more?)  4" color LCD TV's are prohibitively 
expensive, but there is a portable video game system by Atari called the 
Lynx system which sells for about $170 and contains a 4" color LCD.  I'm 
still working on the PowerGlove so I haven't had time to follow up on it 
and/or rip one apart, but if it were possible to find out more about the 
device, one might even enlist the use of the game processor.  From the 
demos I've seen, it seemed that it could do some pretty zippy scaled 
bitblts.  Maybe this would be useful, maybe not.

I'm currently thinking about two possible setups.  One would be made from 
a Craftsman set of welders' goggles.  They have 2" lenses held in by screw 
caps which could be replaced by 2" magnifying glass lenses, and the rest 
could be mounted on the front.  The other would be made of a couple of 2" 
by 4" rectangular Acrylic magnifying glass lenses which would be abutted 
and cemented with a nose notch cut out and worn directly on the face.  In 
this configuration the center of the lens would be outside the eyes, which 
is actually desirable, as it makes any image in front of each lens appear 
more toward the center.  The rest of the box could be made by cementing 
1/8" sheet acrylic, formed and cemented into a rectangular frustrum, to 
the lenses.  A second magnifying stage, perhaps a Fresnel lens, would go 
between the eye lenses and the screens.  I think this would give just 
about the right amount of magnification.  It would probably be pretty 
lightweight, and maybe a single heat-formed strip of acrylic over the head 
and a strap would be enough to keep it on.

Eric Pepke                                    INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET:   pepke@fsu
Florida State University                      SPAN:     scri::pepke
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052                    BITNET:   pepke@fsu

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