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From: ion@falcon.cc.ukans.edu (Iain Shigeoka)
Subject: Re: [Q] Head tracking devices
In-Reply-To: cmsbdoll@cms.livjm.ac.uk's message of 21 Jun 1995 21:00:12 EDT
Message-ID: <MBOYER.95Jun23094014@amadeus.ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca>
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Organization: La division Robotique de l'Institut de recherche d'Hydro-Quebec
References: <MBOYER.95Jun21210012@amadeus.ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 1995 13:40:14 GMT
Approved: mboyer@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca, crr@ireq-robot.hydro.qc.ca

Bryan,

Regarding your request for information, I happen to have just seen a head 
mounted display sold for virtual reality that does exactly what you
describe.  It plugs into the serial port of a PC and uses the mouse driver
to communicate normally to programs.  They're releasing a higher resolution
version that works with windows pretty soon (like sometime this week).  The
cost was $1000 and the head tracking was pretty impressive.  (playing doom
on it was quite an experience).  Unfortunately you aren't supposed to use 
it for more than 15 minutes without taking a 5 minute break.  Not too 
useful for general computing.

I also know there are a few other companies selling similar devices. IO 
glasses comes to mind.  Also, there are 3d mice that use solid state gyro's
to do full "space" tracking.  I believe it would be quite simple to hook 
one directly to a hat for head tracking.  You might also look into hooking 
your own solid state gyroscopes up to a helmet for the purpose.  I know 
there is a company selling them (a chip with one or two gyros on it).  They
call it the gyrostar (I believe).  If you're interested, I can look through
my product library at school to get the company name.

I was also down at the bookstore today and saw the latest issue of
VR World Magazine ($5 US) (July/August 1995).  You should go and
buy it. I saw they had a London subscription address so you should
be able to find it at your bookstores too.  This issue has their annual
(this is the first year though) list of all the VR hardware/software
vendors and manufacturers they could locate.  It has product listings,
contact addresses, etc. and includes TONS of motion trackers.  I saw
listings for ones you can hook to HMD's and others for other body
parts and even full body trackers.  It would make an excellent resource
index for your project.  Hope this helps.  If you have further questions,
feel free to ask.  I can go back and lookup the london subscription 
address if you want.

-iain
                                                        
***************************************************     
* Iain Shigeoka:  ion@falcon.cc.ukans.edu         *     
*                 http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~ion *     
***************************************************

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