OSNews takes a look at some inexpensive “Virtual Reality” monitor specs. You wear them like a pair of glasses, and your eye sees the equivalent of a relatively large monitor. It’s been a science fiction dream for years, and now it’s available for under $200 at Geeks.com, albeit in rudimentary form. So how do they work in real life? Read more to find out.Every kid who grew up following sci-fi has dreamt about personal robots, wearable computers, flying cars, and other technological wonders of the near future. Aside from vacuum cleaners and toy dogs, personal robots are still just for Japanese PR stunts. Flying cars? Let’s just try to get this gasoline problem tackled out before we embark on even more gas-guzzling ways of getting across town. But wearable computing is a reality. Lots of us have PDAs and even cell phones that are relatively powerful computers by historical standards. If NASA had had an iPaq in the moon landing days, they could have done their calculations in a fraction of the time.
The kinds of things you can do with tiny computers is hampered a bit by the correspondingly tiny screens. They’re fine for tapping out a to-do list or looking up a phone number, but if you’d like to work on a large document or watch a movie, it’s rough. So we’ve had dreams of simulating a large screen, using special glasses, or even holograms or lasers. Wearable computing pioneers have been fashioning various devices to this end for decades, but they’ve been a specialty item until recently. A few years ago, I tried out a pair of Sony Glasstron VR specs when they first came out, and they were pretty cool, but they cost something like $800. Since then, the Sonys have become popular for professional videographers, allowing them to essentially wear their viewfinders. Although the Sonys are now available for less than $500, it’s still a specialty item.
VR specs have a few advertised uses: watching movies or playing video games on a simulated large screen, when carrying a large screen isn’t possible, true virtual reality uses where you’re interacting with a virtual world and need to be able to move around, training exercises, like watching yourself do your golf swing in real-time, or even hooked up to a remote control car with a wireless camera, so you feel like you’re in the cockpit. For me, personally, I imagine it being useful mostly for watching movies. The resolution on these things, 800×225 or so, isn’t enough for most computing purposes, but fine for TV.
I recently discovered the TV show Firefly, and I’ve been watching the series on DVD compulsively, sometimes late into the night. I sometimes use my laptop and headphones to be able to watch in bed and not disturb my wife, but even the glow from the laptop is pretty bright. I was able to hook up these specs to a portable DVD player I have and watch Firefly, and my wife slept like a baby. Similarly, I think that being able to take these along on an airplane and watch movies would be pretty cool.
I think that personal video specs will be a product niche that continues to evolve, and within a few years we’ll have products that significantly outperform what’s available now.
So how did these particular video specs perform? To some extent, you get what you pay for. The picture quality was not as good as the Sonys, and was not a particularly good substitute even for a small screen like a PDA. The colors were washed out, and the cheap optics in the units made the edges of the picture blurry.
Wearing the specs was pretty comfortable, but focusing your eyes on the “screen” does produce a bit of eye strain, though it was exacerbated by the washed out picture and blurriness I mentioned before. They have two ear buds attached to the sides, that pop into little storage areas when not used. Handy.
The unit had a proliferation of different video and audio adapters, but if you don’t have a 1/4 inch plug or RCA outputs for video, you’ll need other adaptors. I needed to use an s-video to RCA adaptor in order to watch my Powerbook’s output on the specs. Unfortunately, some of the more useful devices to plug these into, like PDAs, don’t have video out at all. Consequently, most of the devices that you might have in your house that you could plug these into probably aren’t mobile, so you might have a hard time using them to their full potential.
I think I’ll wait for another couple of generations of these things before I get too excited.
Cost: $167
Pros: Inexpensive, rechargeable battery pack, generous assortment of cables and adaptors, works as advertised
Cons: low resolution, washed out color, cheap optics blur the edges of the picture, no support for s-video
I’m waiting for when they display directly on your retinas.
Well, does it?
Does your computer have RCA video out? If so, then yes.
Or does both eyes get the same picture?
It is not stereo. That’s why I call it “VR” specs and not VR specs.
Looks to me like it’s one of those plain ol’ head mounted tv:s, ie. NOT steroscopic, thus, not virtual reality, unless you are blind on one eye, then it will be virtual reality.
VR is sooooo 1996. Wake me up when we have something better than a helmet with a TV in it. I remember in the late ’90s seeing and reading a lot about virtual reality goggles that used lasers to paint the image directly on your eye, and apparently the military was already using the technology at the time. Whatever became of that? Until there’s no gap between you and the image you’re seeing, then it’s no more “virtual reality” than pressing your nose to the monitor you’re looking at now.
I totally agree with you there about the sooo 1996.
Why? Why? Why?
Why does anybody want to were a helment with little tv’s in it? Hows it gonna enchance anything?
The future is NOT VR headsets. its when reality and virtual are mixed. Its when computer’s are so intergrated that you no longer know you’re using it. There will be no “oh lets turn the comp on” it will be so part of life that it is there, everywhere in your home.
Oh and a pratical side, vr headset suck. Firehazard? carry it to work? Cant see your enviorement around you? Think of all the health and safety situations you can think of.
So in one word… no.
There’s a lot of really good true VR (stereoscopic) HMD’s, they do however also cost somewhere in the ranges of $10k-$100k, which not even I, can afford
There is some new company that has started producing some consumer VR HMD’s that were supposed to be quite cheap, but then also very low in resolution. Can’t remember the name though. I think they were mentioned on slashdot sometime back.
I agree with the comments above but support the movement as whole to affordable VR. The more we buy these products the more money will go into developing them. What about someone doing a cross-section of all of the VR technologies available as well as predictions for the future? There are other technologies on the horizon bringing 3d to your flatscreen (look up DDD) which may be fair contenders to VR goggle adoption. Why have the fun alone when everyone can get in on the 3d fun!?
One last thing: Why do they always have to make the goggles look like plastic pieces of poo!? Someone get the Apple design team on that.
Having a lowres TV on you nose is not VR.. From what I can see this piece of hardware support neither stereo-graphics nor motion-tracking in any sense.. booh!
One thing to consider with any of this kind of display is whether they can damage your eyesight.
A traditional issue is “vergence lock” caused by the image being at an unchanging position w.r.t. your eyes. This is analogous to remaining seated in a fixed (goo or bad) position for too long, thus causing upper-limb disorders, and the problems that can be caused by vergence lock are analogous
I don’t think you’re going to watch DVDs on this thing, let alone fiddle around with 3D.
Good review – I’d always wanted to buy “VR” type goggles as a kid for playing computer games etc. Its a shame the unit review caused so much eye strain etc – though I suspect this is similar for any VR glasses of the same style.
While at university I had chance to study Augmented Reality, and I really believe it is an under utilised technology. Why take the computing power to regenerate a scene with additions when you can overlay those additions on the scene in front of the user. I believe Microsoft are developing “sat nav” for cars that actually projects a ghost car in front of the bonnet that moves with traffic, indicates before junctions etc. (See last week’s AutoExpress Magazine in the UK for article).
AR is definitely the next big technology over VR… its just a shame no-one has come up with a way to mass market its use.
For those interested, someone actually ported Quake to use AR – i.e. monsters are superimposed over the view of the world around you.
http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www/
I think I’ll buy some of those to watch movies/tv shows while I commute. Hope the other drivers don’t mind a lot 🙂
The problem with these things is that they are not stylish enough. Just like the watch calculator, or the watch TV, The old lugable laptops, the hard plastic pocket protector. is that they they are not stylish enough for normal use in normal society. They are bulky and rather an eyesore. Once you can make things stylish enough to really look good on you like the iPod or small enough to hide like most of the wireless hands free units for cellphones which are just placed in the ear and anyone with long hair it becomes invisible. Back in the 80s Cell phones were not stylish, they were toys for the rich or people who needed them in remote areas or in cars. They weren’t something you teenager wanted to go to school with. They had portable MP3 players before the iPod but apple made the iPod small enough to hide if it wasn’t a good situation to be showing it, and stylish enough to show to the public. Portable Gear is not about how much functionality you can cram in a small space but how well the public recieves it.
Well it goes atleast as far back as the mid 80s.
There was a company in San Mateo CA called VR Reseach IIRC by Jaron Lanier etc. Their VR test program became Swivel 3d which evolved into a product range sold by the predecessor of Macromedia for creating 3d models.
Their kit esp the Dataglove was pretty hot with NASA.
I also remember seeing this stuff in the UK at parallel hardware shows where lots of cpus were used to render ever so badly shoot em ups in 3d worlds. It used to make people sick though. Alot of bad press followed. You had to be strapped down.
Then there was the Lawnmower Man, and after that it seemed to all go away.
transputer guy
I think the i-glasses were the best attempt for an affordable 3d headgear so far – it even worked with Amiga. 🙂
I bought the 3d Pro headset for ~$1200.
The stereoscopic mode works with most games (Doom 3, Halflife, etc).
[url]http://www.i-glassesstore.com/ig-hrvpro.html%5B/url]
At $117 I’d probably buy that thing right now if the vertical resolution was better. With 225 pixels you just can’t do much.
The cheapest real VR HMD is the Z800, see
http://www.emagin.com/3dvisor/
It has a headtracker and the two 800×600 OLED screens will give different images with the NVidia 3D drivers (framerate hit is about 30%).
http://www.bedoper.com/bedoper/2004/ultimatereality.htm
Amiga people will like it most of all, but anyone interested in VR/AR should read it.
Abstract: This study explores various uses of virtual reality goggles in conjunction with consumer level items: color cameras, video effects, luminance keying and videotape, in an effort to ascertain what is feasible at the present time regarding consumer and industrial applications. As a measure toward eventual home theater display prospects, the viability of keying video into a see-through head-mounted display to form a virtual, wall-sized television will be determined. Another portion of the research will attempt to communicate aspects of the psychedelic experience into electronic form.