P.D. Quick
VR ware Beware:
VR at Siggraph
My mission at this years Siggraph '95 in Los Angeles
was to see the latest VR offerings. Of course, I went
with a great deal of enthusiasm and visions of fully
immersive, fully interactive, forced feedback VR sys-
tems dancing in my head. I had seen all of the film and
television depictions of VR. And I had seen all of the
media hype about VR these past few years. Now I was
finally going to see what was really out there.
For the most part, I was disappointed. I was expecting to
be wowed by the VR products and entertainment offered
at the conference, but I wasn't. There were a few standouts
in the crowd though, and these few products seemed even
more impressive when compared to the rest. But new products
were only part of the VR offering at Siggraph -- there were a
number of informative courses, papers and panels
that
offered some insights into the potential for VR as well as the
pitfalls of this infant industry. Among the highlights were
products by Virtual I/O, The Vivid Group and Multigen Inc.,
research projects at Georgia
Institute of Technology, the
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and discussions
concerning haptic devices, physical interfaces and their
necessity in virtual environments, and the physiological and
psychological side effects of VR on users.
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