Article 3440 of sci.virtual-worlds:
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Path: news.u.washington.edu!milton.u.washington.edu!hlab
From: vpl!zach@decwrl.dec.com (George Zachary)
Subject: INDUSTRY: VPL's MicroCosm - Clarification from VPL
Message-ID: <1992Feb24.061759.13286@u.washington.edu>
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Sender: news@u.washington.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: University of Washington
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1992 01:01:56 GMT
Approved: cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu


I have read various pieces which sound like knocks against the 
MicroCosm.  I would like to address these points on sci.virtual-worlds...

MicroCosm VR System

It appears from information on the net that a clear understanding of the 
MicroCosm should be shared (no pun intended.)  The MicroCosm includes:

1) EyePhone XVR that is both hand-held and head-mounted with 105K pels per 
LCD with a field of view of 108 degrees horizontal.  The EyePhone XVR also 
has built-in finger controls (buttons) for flying.  These controls are 
mounted on the hand-mount called the ZoomGrip.  The ZoomGrip can be taken 
off for use as a pure head-mounted display.

2) DataGlove XVR is the glove that the user uses to grab and interact with 
virtual objects.

3) Tracking is provided by Ascension's Flock of Birds product with 2 
receivers for hand and head.

4) CosmTron provides Crystal River's Convolvotron software using the 
AudioMedia card.  This combination spatializes a 1-source virtual sound.

5) Rendering graphics are provided by a PAIR of Division I860/Toshiba/Inmos 
boards that fit inside the Macintosh Quadra 900.  Division claims these 
boards process 40,000 Gouraud shaded, lit, z-buffered 100 pixel polygons/sec. 
Therefore, the user receives this processing rate in each eye, yielding a 
total of 80,000 polygons/sec as the system throughput.

6) Macintosh Quadra 900 runs VPL's MC Swivel (Swivel 3D Professional) and 
Body Electric while the Division boards perform the rendering.  This is 
very key as the Quadra 900 68040 has the power to compute complex virtual 
dynamics while the Division I860 chips perform the 3D object transformation 
for each eye.

7) MicroCosm includes MC Swivel that can also accept previously generated 
Swivel 3D models.  At MacWorld, we literally took a 4000 polygon Bicycle 
and rendered it at 10 frames per second with no optimization at all.  In 
fact, this bicycle model came directly from the MacroMind/Paracomp booth 
on a disk and we loaded it directly into MicroCosm with no change or 
optimization.  In fact, the 4000 polygons were before triangulation, which 
meant that they were closed to 5500 to 6000 polygons.

8) MicroCosm includes Body Electric which is a visually programmed dataflow 
network for creating virtual world dynamics.  In fact, you can change the 
dynamics as you are using the virtual world on the fly.  This is due to the 
fact that Body Electric has an incremental compiler.  Body Electric can also 
send and receive data over Ethernet and serial networks so that MicroCosm can 
interact with remote processes, devices, and users.  This allows you to do m
ulti-user VR with the MicroCosm with nothing else to buy.

Mr. Pimentel of Sense8 states that their system can do 350 polygons at 10Hz 
in stereo for $25,000.

With MicroCosm, the user gets 4000 polygons at 10Hz in stereo with full 
6 degree of freedom tracking for the head and hand, a DataGlove, CosmTron 
for 3D sound, EyePhone XVR, Swivel, Body Electric, and a Macintosh Quadra 
for $58,000.  For slightly over two times the price, the user gets 12 times 
the graphical performance alone, not to mention everything else detailed above.

Also, the MicroCosm Starter System at $44,000 with the Quadra ($37,000 
without Quadra) offers a MicroCosm system with only 1 Division board and 
no EyePhone, but includes a large screen monitor for screen/monitor based VR.

And on one final note,  Body Electric now allows users to link their own 
pre-existing C language programs right into Body Electric dataflow networks 
and change their use interactively.

Mr. Sharp of University of Calgary also claims that his system is cheaper 
than the MicroCosm.  That may be true but at what level of performance 
(assuming that it is using the Intel DVI boards)?  It also does not include 
full 6 degree of freedom tracking for the head or any integrated software.

The market will decide what is a more powerful, effective, and "cheaper" 
product.  All of the opinions voiced so far claim they have the best solution,
but the results will be evident in the marketplace.

Respectfully,

George Zachary
Director of Product Sales & Marketing
VPL Research
Redwood City, CA 94063
415-361-1710