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From: mark@cs.ualberta.ca (Mark Green)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: VR hardware questions
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.195408.13585@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 24 Jun 91 18:56:37 GMT
References: <1991Jun24.153351.13571@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu (Human Int. Technology Lab)
Organization: University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
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In article <1991Jun24.153351.13571@milton.u.washington.edu>, dtj@sumac.cray.com 
(Dean Johnson) writes:
 
> Since pounding on the moderator (sorry Bob!) about the lack of "reality" in
> this Virtual Reality group, I realized that I have done little help the 
> situation. It is now time for me to stop bitching and start working!
> 
> 1. Does anybody have any idea what the cost of a plain Polhemus emitter (the
>    thing on the top of the eyephones) costs all by itself, not including the
>    boards, etc. that go with it? I am trying to get a handle on what it would
>    cost to prototype other devices, presuming that you have bought atleast
>    one "full boat" system.

I'm not sure why you would want this.  The source and sensor are relatively
easy to fabricate.  The Polhemus itself is relatively old technology
and could be improved greatly if it was reimplemented using current
handware devices.  For the technical details on the Polhemus see the
Sept. 1979 issue of IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic
Systems.

> 2. Does anybody have any experience with drivers and interfaces to the 
>    dataglove, other than through the Macintosh and "Body Electric". Someone 
>    *has* to have tried to hook it up to a Sun or something like that. Even
>    instances where you hit a "show-stopper" is of great help. Perhaps we
>    can get a collaborative effort going for the DG like is going on with
>    the PowerGlove.

For several years we have used a client-server model for driving the
DataGlove.  One process runs on one of our SGI workstations and interface
with the DataGlove using the standard serial protocol.  This process
handles all the low level details of the interaction with the DataGlove.
The user process uses a subroutine library to communicate with the
server process.  The user program can reside on any of the workstations
on our laboratory.  Communications between the two processes is through
TCP/IP over an ethernet.