[sldev] Commercial CAVEs / stereoscopic displays ???

[Dale Mahalko]

I wasn't aware that CAVEs have moved beyond being merely a prototype
research project that grad students hack together from spare parts, to
being a full commercial product.

I never hear anything about BARCO. I know they made CRT-based
projectors years ago but I thought they went out of business and
disappeared.. Boy was I wrong, after doing a random web search on them
today..


I'm sure this is one of those "if you have to ask, you can't afford
it" products:
http://www.barco.com/projection_systems/images/I-Space_big.jpg

BARCO I-Space: Multisided Cubic Immersive Space environment
http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/products/product.asp?element=911


Also take a look at this easily reconfigurable VR screen. Make it a
CAVE, or open it up, and flatten it out... whoah

BARCO MoVE: Modular Virtual Environment
http://www.barco.com/corporate/en/products/product.asp?element=893


What are we talking here, hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars
for this sort of real-world, ready-to-use virtualization hardware??
:-)

Has anyone tried using SL with CAVEs like this yet? (I expect a person
would need to either be insanely rich or have access to a well-funded
university to do it.)


Some avatars in SL have these invisible keyboards that materialize
when they type.... presumably you could really do that in an actual
CAVEspace, controlling SL with a wholly-virtual user interface that
appears out of nowhere and disappears when you don't need it, getting
rid of the keyboard and mouse entirely.

Though I'd expect any such 3D UI to control a 3D virtual world would
have to be managed wholly locally by the client software on top of the
virtual world. LSL doesn't have enough access to all the local client
functions to be usable for building virtual replacements to the client
UI.

- Scalar Tardis / Dale Mahalko