From: Robin Hollands <R.Hollands@sheffield.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: PROD: Libs for programming for CYBERMAXX ?
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 15:06:55 +0100
Message-ID: <322300FF.253E@shef.ac.uk>
Organization: Automatic Control & Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield 


Markus Herb wrote:
> I'm owning a CyberMaxx HMD with 180k pixels.
> My question is :
> Do their exist any programming libraries (PAS - Units, C - files etc.)
> with graphic routines for the special Cybermaxx format (I think it has
> something to do with interlacing)?
> Routines for the headtracking would also be nice.

Markus,

My book, "The Virtual Reality Homebrewer's Handbook" has a section on
programmming the CyberMaxx 120K and 180K, including some sample code
in C and Pascal. You may also find there's some info at VictorMaxx's
WWW sie: http://www.vmaxx.com, although I haven't visited it for a
while.

If you want to see tracking data the quick and easy way - fire up your
terminal emulator in Windows. Select the port your CyberMaxx is
connected to, and set the transfer rate at 9600 baud. Turn off the
power to your HMD, and then turni it on again to reset. This has
automatically put the HMD into binary, polled mode. Select your
transfer window so that you can send information to the port (pretend
your using the terminal emulator with a modem). Type 'E' to put the
HMD into ASCII mode, and then 'H' to get data sent continuously. You
should then get Yaw, Pitch and Roll data streaming continuously up the
screen. Read my book for more info on tracking data ;-)


As far as the stereo graphics go, the Enigma coding is simply using
alternate lines for each screen. If you write some simple code to put
two sets of alternating stripes across the screen e.g. (in Pascalish
pseudocode):

{for a 640 by 480 screen}
for row:=0 to 239 do
    for column:=0 to 639 do
        PutPixel(column,row,colour1)
	PutPixel(column,row+1,colour2)

... you should find that when you switch to HMD to stereo mode, you'll have 
one showing colour1 and the other showing colour2.

Cheers,

Robin
(UK VR-SIG Chairman)

Email: r.hollands@sheffield.ac.uk
WWW: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/staff/rjh/rjh.html
BOOK: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~vrmbg/vrhmhb/vrhmhb/html