From: kpc@panix.com (Kevin Centanni) Subject: TECH: Report from a V.R. Show in N.Y.C. Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 13:19:41 EST I though some of you might be interested in this: I just came back from a virtual reality convention here in New York City. It was sponsered by Media Dimensions, publishers of "Speech Technology" and "International Voice Systems Review" magazines in conjunction with Speech Tech/Voice Systems Worldwide '92: New York. The show had about 15 exhibitors dealing with aspects of virtual reality... some interesting ones: -Reflection Technologies: The Private Eye This is an $800 device that consists of a headband with a small plastic box suspended about 3 inches in front of one of your eyes... as you look ahead, the image inside of the box is 'superimposed' over the real world. An interesting note: Inside of the box is not a video screen.. it's a single row of L.E.D.'s and an oscillating mirror.. the display is VERY crisp and sharp. It's available in OEM versions or with a PC-compatible card that emulates a CGA screen. The resolution is 720 x 280. -ISCAN: Headhunter Head and Eye Tracking System ISCAN makes a series of head and eye tracing devices. Most of them are pretty expensive ( $20,000 - $30,000 ). At this show, though, the ISCAN people were showing off a compact system for detecting eye positioning - the interface hardware was contained on a card inside of a PC... the user was wearing a helmet and looking through a dichroic mirror... there was a video monitor showing his field of view. On the monitor was a small white dot - this was showing WHERE the user was looking. I'm told that this system will sell for approx. $6000. -Mandala This is a compnay from Canada that makes an Amiga-based system. There are no eyephones or helmets - you stand in front of a blue screen and a camera is pointed at you... you are then superimposed over Amiga graphics and/or video from a laserdisc. The computer is tracking a silouhette of your body as you move around the screen. The developer, Vincent John Vincent, has a couple of cute demos... in one, you can 'play' a set of virtual drums; in another, you can play 'catch' with another player. -BattleTech Center There was a booth from Virtual World Entertainments, Inc., creators of BattleTech Center in Chicago. Not much more than a few pictures and some brochures and literature. (Has anyone played BattleTech????) -Straylight Corp. - PhotoVR "PhotoRealism Meets VR On The Desktop" is what the flyer says... this company's technology uses Intel DVI boards to display above-average quality images. Eyephones are used, although the tracking and response time was exceptionally slow. It was kinda cute and easy to deal with for most of the people I watched... seems like it might lend itself to more of a mass-market type of application. -Latent Image Development Corp. A rather 'strange' guy was at this booth (the pres. of Latent Image), showing off some SEGA active LCD shutter glasses and a REAL OLD VHS machine hooked to a color monitor. His company does 'patented' b/w to color and 2D to 3D conversions. Interesting (?) -Crystal River Engineering: The Convolvotron This PC board set delivers 3D sound over headphones. Scott Foster and Beth Wenzel (from NASA-Ames Research Center) had eyephones set up showing a crude virtual world. This interesting part was the sounds... as you navigated through the room, there were objects floating and moving in space. There was a saxaphone, a bi-plane circling the room, a martini glass (with the sound of a man reading a novel inside), and a hi-hat percussion instrument. As you approached these objects, the sounds of the objects were being manipulated and synthesized by the Convolvotron, creating a 3D audio effect. Doppler shift was included on the plane's sounds.. it was rather impressive. There were a bunch of other booths there - mostly related to speech recognition and such... Raymond Kurzweil was there with one of his speech companies. And, tonight at the Limelight (a church-turned-disco here in Manhattan), is "Beyond 2000" - A look at 21st Century Fashion, Sytle, and Ideas (!). There are supposed to be v.r. performances and stuff. (A good excuse to go out on the company's expense account). -- Kevin P. Centanni Corporate Communication Group 212.268.2100 kpc@panix.com {cmcl2,apple}!panix!kpc From pbh@jake.cc.wayne.edu Thu Feb 13 06:51:59 1992 Received: from JAKE.CC.WAYNE.EDU by milton.u.washington.edu (5.65/UW-NDC Revision: 2.22 ) id AA24322; Thu, 13 Feb 92 06:51:57 -0800 Sender: @milton Received: by jake.cc.wayne.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA27748; Thu, 13 Feb 92 09:51:04 EST Date: Thu, 13 Feb 92 09:51:04 EST From: pbh@jake.cc.wayne.edu (Patrick Haggood) Message-Id: <9202131451.AA27748@jake.cc.wayne.edu> To: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu Subject: Re: ADMIN: Archives for unpublished papers (Was Re: Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds In-Reply-To: <1992Feb10.224803.950@milton.u.washington.edu> References: <1992Feb7.010906.10110@milton.u.washington.edu> Organization: Wayne State University, Detroit Cc: Status: R Definitely. If the nets are indeed a more true form of democratic expression, and more and more of us are being connected each day, journals which can be 'published' without previous acceptance by the established expert panels are only natural. Go for it (and I would like to participate; please keep me updated).