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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scott Garee who wrote (11183)	3/17/1999 12:30:00 AM
From: Oliver Hahn	Respond to of 16960

OT-- Re: helmet 3D interface Sun, Scott, et. al., Scott brings up the key point: "It definitely has to be 3D so the eyes don't have to focus on something an inch or two away, otherwise you're going to have eyestrain and headaches." My point is that there is no way that the eyes can deal with any image just a few inches away, independent of whether it is rendered 2D or 3D. For light to be originating only a couple of inches in front of the eyes, either the eye must focus on the screen generating the light(severe eye strain), or the light must be holographic. Which is to say, a hologram reproduces the light rays that mimic an object that is located behind the "object" plane (which is the screen), and so the eyes actually focus on an apparent object that is far behind the actual screen that is just 2 inches away from the eyes. To belabor, the flip side is that when you look at the cool scenes with your V2 accelerator (we all have one, right?), your eyes are focused exactly on the computer screen, not 50 feet away as would be apparent from what is in the scene. One intriguing idea along these lines are the popular posters that look like a random pattern, but if you stare at them long enough you see a 3D shape emerge. This is holography at work, and sure enough the trick to seeing the 3D image is to defocus your eyes so that you are in fact focusing somewhere behind the poster. Since a computer crunched the numbers to generate such holograms, given enough speed the computer could generate the patterns to appear on your 3D goggles that change in real time to give you a true 3D experience. The problem I see is whether the eyes could maintain their focus properly during the evolution of the image, though this problem may be simplified due to the fact that most people cannot focus on something 2 inches away, so there is no way to get fooled by the apparent random pattern that is the catch to the popular posters. So, Sun, if you are thinking business, think along those lines. Oliver "I don't actually own a graphics accelerator, I am a computer illiterate SOB and proud of it" Hahn