To: Linda Kaplan who wrote (11064 ) 4/12/1998 3:23:00 PM From: IanBruce Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 213177
Bruce, Tell me about the eyeglasses? And what's a SWIAS? You can call me Ian (Bruce is my family name, as in Robert The . My father's from Glasgow). SWAIS, as I guess you know now, is CompUSA/Apple's Store WithIn A Store. About the "eyeglasses" - we're working on a wide field-of-view head mounted display for personal, business, and aerospace applications with the technical assistance of United Technologies, Inc. The device combines wide-field stereo vision and sound in a simple, light-weight configuration. Because of the nature of the device's micro-optical elements, it looks like we'll be able to fit the entire LCD/lens assembly within a deceptively small package - probably no larger than a pair of sports sunglasses, even using displays as large as 1.75". It may also interest you to note that there is no optical distortion either chromatic or geometric anticipated by the design - a handy feature if you're building larger viewing fields out of discreet displays. In short, a direct-view stereoscopic display device that is smaller, lighter, and with an FOV more than an order of magnitude larger than anything else on the market for under $1,000.00. (we're looking at a price-point for Mac's at around $500) UTI's optical division is one of the few companies in the country capable of prototyping this particular design by virtue of their expertise in micro-optics. The first working proof-of-concept was completed four months ago - and I've begun investigating a low-cost manufacturing process in cooperation with both United Technologies and Foster-Miller Group in Waltham, MA (foster-miller.com). Having established the manufacturing cost of the key components, it's been our intention to develop a series of products for several markets with various viewing fields, optical resolutions and other features. As I mentioned before, the suggested configuration of the basic model will provide much more than 10 times the viewing field of current competitive consumer VR display systems (Virtual I/O, Forte, etc.) in a package a fraction of the size. This will make the level of sensory immersion delivered by the viewer unmatched by all but high-end military and industrial virtual reality systems. The design is also unique in that the optical/display components can be seamlessly combined to form larger viewing fields and/or higher resolution displays. At the extreme end, a 4x4 element array using off-the-shelf AMLCD displays could provide a viewing field of up to 270øh x 120øv with a monochromatic horizontal resolution of 4,500 pixels. The general consumer applications for this device that immediately suggest themselves are; immersive PC (read "Macintosh") displays; pocket computers (e-Mac?); video "Walkmen"; VR cable systems; VR-DVC camcorders; and dedicated video game systems. Downstream applications could be as diverse as medical visualization and "super cockpit" displays for aircraft. To reiterate -as far as computers go, this will be a Macintosh-only product. The prototype works, the patents are mine , and I don't want to lose money supporting customer's trying to interface these with PC's. But there's no reason why an OEM version of this optical assembly couldn't also find it's way into camcorders, fax-pagers and similar devices. The info's a little dated, but please check out: <http://www.evangelist.macaddict.com/messages07/digest737/message004.html> and, <http://www.evangelist.macaddict.com/messages07/digest744/message012.html> Ian Bruce New York, NY