[sci.virtual-worlds] Eyephones

frerichs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (David J Frerichs) (11/20/90)

It is widely known that the VPL eyephones are not all they are cracked up
to be...
the question is, is there a COLOR solution to high resolution miniature
monitors...
something along the lines of color LCD with RGB input not NTSC.
I know color LED monitors are in development but they aren't here yet and
when they do come out, they will be expensive as hell...

any ideas?

-dfRERICHS
same net time
same net address

pepke@SCRI1.SCRI.FSU.EDU (Eric Pepke) (11/21/90)

In article <11429@milton.u.washington.edu> frerichs@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu 
(David J Frerichs) writes:
> It is widely known that the VPL eyephones are not all they are cracked up
> to be...
> the question is, is there a COLOR solution to high resolution miniature
> monitors...
> something along the lines of color LCD with RGB input not NTSC.

When I saw inside the VPL eyephones, it seemed to me that the main problem 
was the size of the triads.  They were big, big enough to be perceived as 
objects in their own right, which interfered with their contribution to 
the overall picture.  There was a scrim in front of the LCD to blur them 
out a bit, but of course then you could see the blurring.

So, I don't think that the problem is NTSC versus RGB but rather just the 
inherent resolution of the device.  (Yes, I know all about NTSC and its 
shortcomings.)

We really need more pixels on the screens.  This can be done one of two 
ways--by making the screens denser or by making them bigger and changing 
the optics.  Does anybody know what size the LCD's in the eyephones are?  
The biggest I have seen in consumer electronics is 4 inches, in the Sony 
LCD TV and the Atari Lynx portable video game.  The latter is cheaper and 
might be useful if one could figure out the driver circuitry.

Eric Pepke                                    INTERNET: pepke@gw.scri.fsu.edu
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute MFENET:   pepke@fsu
Florida State University                      SPAN:     scri::pepke
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4052                    BITNET:   pepke@fsu

Disclaimer: My employers seldom even LISTEN to my opinions.
Meta-disclaimer: Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.

jcs@crash.cts.com (John Schultz) (11/22/90)

In <11457@milton.u.washington.edu> pepke@SCRI1.SCRI.FSU.EDU (Eric Pepke) writes:

>When I saw inside the VPL eyephones, it seemed to me that the main problem 
>was the size of the triads.  They were big, big enough to be perceived as 
[stuff deleted]
>We really need more pixels on the screens.  This can be done one of two 
>ways--by making the screens denser or by making them bigger and changing 
>the optics.  Does anybody know what size the LCD's in the eyephones are?  
>The biggest I have seen in consumer electronics is 4 inches, in the Sony 
>LCD TV and the Atari Lynx portable video game.  The latter is cheaper and 
>might be useful if one could figure out the driver circuitry.

  I believe the Lynx's (Seiko) display is only 160x100 pixels (lo-res)...

  At the lab were I work, fiberoptic bundles are used to take the image
from a SharpVision projector to optics that enlarge the image to about
13" diagonal. Doesn't look too bad blown up to 13", so this technique
might work with LEEP optics and head coupled applications.



  John