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The Changing Face of Virtual Reality
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The most common perception of virtual reality is of gloves and
head-mounted displays powered by expensive high-end graphics
workstations. That image of VR has given way to a wider and much more
accessible range of options.
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PC-Based VR Solutions
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The most significant change in recent years to the world of VR is
migration away from expensive multiprocessor shared memory architectures
and towards PC clusters. The Linux operating system gives developers
many of the features of higher-end UNIX systems yet it runs on standard
PC hardware. Graphics chips in PC's are improving at a rapid pace,
doubling performance every 12 months and improving in quality and
feature sets. Open source libraries such as
VR Juggler provide an application
development framework for developing flexible, scalable VR applications
on commodity PC hardware.
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Display Technology
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Head-mounted displays for single users have largely been overtaken by
collaborative, large-screen and surround-screen systems such as
CAVEs and PowerWalls. Building
a CAVE-like system used to require expensive projectors capable of
active stereo projection and the structure to support such heavy
projectors. Now, advances with LCD and DLP projection technology have
made high quality images available at a considerably lower price point.
Passive stereo projection using circular polarization and very
inexpensive glasses has come to replace active stereo using powered LCD
shutter glasses. Two commodity projectors can achieve the result of
one high-end projector for considerably less cost.
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Interaction
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Gloves still have a place as interaction devices for VR, but many users
have found that joystick-like wands lend themselves to easy, intuitive
application interfaces. For more complex GUIs, users are finding that
a standard 2-D GUI on a tablet PC can be much easier both to implement
and to use than a 3-D equivalent. By embracing traditional GUI
elements, VR developers can develop full-featured applications more
quickly and focus on the elements of an application that need to be
3-dimensional.
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Choosing the Right Tools for the Job
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Each VR application has a different set of requirements for effective
use of a VR system. Some applications require full immersion in a
surround-screen environment to be truly effective, while others may
be just as effective on a single screen. The key to developing an
effective, low-cost VR environment is deciding which elements are the
most important for a given application. Low-cost systems are making
VR a viable option for many companies that need to visualize in 3-D.
Affordable VR hardware will likely give way to a wider range of
applications as more users begin to adopt this technology.
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