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From: phil@eos.UUCP (Phil Stone)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Glove / New Pointer Device ???
Keywords: pointer gloves
Message-ID: <3072@eos.UUCP>
Date: 3 Apr 89 17:13:59 GMT
References: <1211@microsoft.UUCP> <1143@internal.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: phil@eos.UUCP (Phil Stone)
Organization: NASA Ames Research Center, Calif.
Lines: 32

In article <1143@internal.Apple.COM> farrier@Apple.COM (Cary Farrier) writes:
>	A guy from NASA came here and did a demonstration on Head Mounted
>	Display technology that they are working on.  With it they had a 
>	glove like you mentioned, and were using some software created
>	by Warren Robinett (remember the old Atari 2600 game *Adventure*?),
>	to move around in a 3D world, using the glove as a controller.  The
>	only problem that I've heard about the head mounted display units is
>	that you can get terrible headaches, because your eyes are trying
>	to focus somewhere off in the distance but the actual image is 
>	right in front of you.
>
The VIEW (Virtual Integrated Environment Workstation) project is my main
task here at Ames (I work on the audio side of the project).  The head-
mounted display uses stereo hi-res LCD screens viewed through wide-angle
optics.  A magnetic-field position and orientation sensor (six degrees
of freedom) tracks head position, and this information is used to 
manipulate the 3D graphics data world.  A data glove, manufactured by
VPL, and developed in conjunction with the VIEW project, uses fiber
optics to detect joint angles of the fingers, and has an additional
3-space tracker unit like the one on the head-display.

Though I haven't been "in" the system for more than about twenty minutes
at a time, I haven't noticed the headache problem.   Nausea is sometimes
a problem, however.  It's possible to present the user with some pretty
vivid visual cues (flying "upside down," e.g.) that conflict with the
inner ear's idea of what's really going on.

Graphics are driven by an ISG (not a typo) display processor, with some
preprocessing done by the HP840 host.  So what's this got to do with
the Amiga? - Not much.  Just thought you'd like some inside info.

		Phil Stone	 (phil@eos.arc.nasa.gov | ames!eos!phil)