uselton@nas.nasa.gov (Samuel P. Uselton) (05/08/91)
In article <1991May8.135105.15829@milton.u.washington.edu> autodesk!robertj@uunet.UU.NET (Young Rob Jellinghaus) writes: >To hell with the screens. The most usable sort of display system for >me, at least, would be a cyberspace-based one. What could such a >future system do? > >Slip on a glove and a pair of glasses, with the computer on your belt. >Assume the glasses are translucent, so you can still see, but the ************************************* >computer generates images which overlay the real world. A white table >could have black text superimposed on it. You could be lying on your >back in the grass, manipulating 3-D models floating in the space above >your body. No need for any clipboard at all. > ( stuff deleted ) > >If you get confused between the real world and the superimposed images, >just clip some black sunshades on the front of your glasses. Bingo, >you're just seeing the cyberspace. Cute idea, and should work fine. > >The real problem with all this, of course, is the glasses. They're a >pain. Any cyberspace interface that's based on this "superimposed- >images" model will need them, though, unless we can come up with video >contact lenses.... The first head mounted display I ever heard about (the Ivan Sutherland and friends at U. Utah version) and the first two I ever was actually around (a failed prototype at UT Dallas circa 1978 and the U North Carolina system circa 1985) all three used displays hung from the temple bars of glasses which you saw reflected in half-silvered (on the INside of course) lenses of the glasses. Because the lenses are only half-silvered, you still see the "real" world too. Computer generated objects are "ghosts". Of course at the time, the displays were just doing wireframes to keep a decent update rate. I'm not sure how you would include the wide field of view optics, but otherwise............ >-- >Rob Jellinghaus | "Next time you see a lie being spread or >Autodesk, Inc. | a bad decision being made out of sheer >robertj@Autodesk.COM | ignorance, pause, and think of hypertext." >{decwrl,uunet}!autodesk!robertj | -- K. Eric Drexler, _Engines of Creation_ Sam Uselton uselton@nas.nasa.gov employed by CSC working for NASA (Ames) speaking for myself