Poor Man's Virtual Reality
Dutch Guckenberger, Kay M. Stanney · Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting · 1995
Research in virtual reality (VR) technology generally requires a significant up front investment. Unfortunately, while many organizations would like to investigate the potential VR could bring to their endeavors, this prohibitive initial investment often deters their interest. This paper presents a low-cost means of providing stereoscopic virtual scenes. The only requirements include two televisions with two cable channels broadcasting the same field-of-view with the eye point displacement set at approximately the inter-pupillary distance. Such 'poor-man's' VR system are envisioned as being suitable to equip remote sites, such as distance learning centers, to receive and display virtual worlds generated by a central high-end system. Moreover, in the case of new interactive television networks, cooperative interaction between many remote nodes could be facilitated.