esz001@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Will Overington) (06/03/91)
I have been thinking over the last few days about just how one could get virtual reality to work without using a helmet. Well, I think I have this weekend invented a concept that might well work. I have just been having a look at the net items that arrived here earlier today and am interested to read about IBMs work on producing a virtual reality style system without a helmet, relying on a unit fixed on a cap worn by the user. I don't like the idea of wearing a helmet all day, or even a cap, though I had not thought of that, but I have wondered about having a couple of units that fit on the shoulder tabs of 'airline pilot' style shirts, each of which would have a small gyroscope in them. Each unit could have a wire leading forward to the machine, using the sort of coiled wire that stretches out and then pulls back in when the stress is released. Sideways movement of the head would move the position of the units in space, and the processor would then need to compute an updated perspective view of the scene for the new position of the eyes. If one moved one shoulder forward, that is by effectively turning one's body as if one were about to walk in a circle around the monitor, then after a short delay, the system would rotate the object in the display so that, although one had not walked, the object had reached the position as if one had. For example, if one looks at a television programme that shows a hologram of a chess board with pieces on it, then one is usually shown views from a few degrees to left and right of centre, showing that, as the camera pans from one to another, that one can see around objects in the view reconstructed from the hologram. I speculate that with fast enough processing, a perspective view could be computed as the shoulders move from side to side to produce a similar sort of effect. The turning of one shoulder much nearer the monitor than the other would produce a rotating of the whole chess board, so that pieces which were nearest the front were now somewhere else and a new selection of pieces were near the front. I have further speculated that, if, say, such a system were to be used on a PC, then one could model the monitor to appear in the perspective views as if it were a hollow box with a window on the front, with the bottom, sides and top of the inside of the box made to look as if they were physically congruent with the physical sides of the outside of the monitor. I think that this would be psychologically desirable as the monitor would be in one's field of view. Does anyone feel that this is a reasonable way to approach things? Does anyone happen to know if gyroscopes with electrical connections can be obtained small enough to be carried all day on the shoulders? Is it safe? I would be quite interested to try and develop such a device here at Coventry Polytechnic as part of my researches.