HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: tjfeue@bb1t.monsanto.com
Subject: APPS: Question: VR in St. Louis
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: Monsanto Company, St. Louis, MO
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 20:45:52 GMT



Anybody know anything about the VR place at Union Station in St. Louis?
The lines are so long that you can't get near it.

  TED FEUERBACH   Scientific Systems Consultant  Trilogy Consulting, Inc. 
  Lake St. Louis, MO        (314) 537-6603       tjfeue@bb1t.monsanto.com
  Disclaimer:  The opinions expressed herein are MY OWN and obviously not
  the opinions of Trilogy, Monsanto or either of my two ex-wives.
From: jlb31348@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jim Brain)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: TECH: PowerGlove AGE emulation info
Date: 14 Apr 92 04:29:00 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


This is Jim Brain again, here to tell you I have received dozens of replies
from glove people. I am not on the mailing list, so everyone will have to keep
me up to date(I do not have the time to read all the messages from the
mail list). I have had a few requests for the product, which I will respond to
by saying that we have no final products as of yet, just two working prototypes 
and one that I am building.  As for the price, we we will build them and then
see.  I have also received many questions concerning the commands for the
box SIGARCH and I are building.  I will ask a few questions now:

1:      Does anyone want to know all the AGE commands?

2:      Does anyone need to know the commands from Ron Minelli's box?


OK, now a few answers.

I have received a lot of responses wanting a serial interface.  only one person
I know of wanted a parallel interface, so I will probably make it serial with
an option for parallel.

This box will emulate both Ron's and AGE's command set.  I like the AGE
command set better, but the AGE box has a few bugs that I have gotten rid
of.

Our box will end out at least 80 packets of info a second, That is with only
polling enabled in the box code.  We are going to an interrupt type serial
routine to put data out of the box, but that is currently under construction.

That should speed the box considerably.

Any other comments?

Jim Brain

-- 
Nothing is better than Eternal Happiness.             jlb31348@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
A ham sandwich is better than nothing.                                Jim Brain
Therefore, a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness.
From: dsawdai@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Donald J Sawdai)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: TECH:  Sega 3D glasses
Date: 14 Apr 92 21:54:37 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


I have a pair of the Sega 3D glasses and am interested in interfacing
them with my PC (386).  I would appreciate any information about them,
including best on/off driving voltages and best operating frequencies.

Also, I have found hints of information about using INT 2, 9, or D with
the vertical retrace signal.  Does anyone know anything concrete about
this?

Please post or e-mail any info to me.
Thanks

Don Sawdai
dsawdai@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu
-->>Place .signature file here.

[Moderator (Mark): There is some info on a SEGA glasses interface in the 
        sci.virtual-worlds archive, milton.u.washington.edu, in directory
        ~ftp/public/virtual-worlds/cheap-vr.]
From: dionf@ere.umontreal.ca (Dion Francois)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: TECH: Radiation
Date: 9 Apr 92 03:27:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Apr9.065204.11293
Organization: Universite de Montreal
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


In article <1992Apr7.023938.4945@watserv1.waterloo.edu> dstamp@watserv1.waterloo
.edu (Dave Stampe-Psy+Eng) writes:
>
>TOBIAS@bonnie.physik.uni-stuttgart.de () writes:
[ stuff deleted ]
>> I don`t want to frighten anyone here but I think that it`s really
>> necessary to look for information about the problem cause brain
>> cancer isn`t funny at all.
>
>Well, from the reading I've done, the EM field problem is seriously
>overrated.  No consistant evidence or mechanisms: it has more to do
>with politics than science right now.
>
>And small B&W CRTs are used in camcorder viewfinders: mine will put out 
>only twice as much emissons: you don't see anyone trying to ban these
>camcorder viewfinders, do you?

I have used some B&W viewfinders and as David says if it was dangerous, it
would probably go away. I remember that RCA color tube viewfinders were dis-
continued because they caused eyestrain.

Another type of display i have found is a color lcd Citizen monitor. It is
2.9 inches ( external is 3 1/8 x 3 7/16 x 1. It is 4 3/4 ounces but there is
an audio amp, several plugs, 4 AA batteries. If you remove all of this ( you
could even remove the casing, you get an NTSC monitor really light and with
a reasonable resolution of 94608 pixels. So you mount two of them in front with
something to balance at rear and voila! Color eyephone. The price? 150$ each.

--
Francois Dion
    '  _   _   _
 CISM (_) (_)  _) FM       Montreal , Canada       Email: CISM@ERE.UMontreal.CA
      (_)  / . _)             10000 Watts          Telephone no: (514) 343-7511
_______________________________________________________________________________ 
"Lawnmower man is the story of[...] abusive VR researchers[...]" - Voir
From: dstamp@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Dave Stampe-Psy+Eng)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: TECH: Radiation
Date: 7 Apr 92 02:39:38 GMT
Organization: University of Waterloo
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


TOBIAS@bonnie.physik.uni-stuttgart.de () writes:
>
>> Don't worry about.  Monochrome television picture tubes use about 8000
>> volts on their second anode, as opposed to 35000 for color TV CRTs.
>> This means that X-ray production is negligable.  Also, in a HMD the
>> brightness is quite low, so the beam current (and thus X-ray output)
>> is even lower!
>
> The question still is, what`s negligable ???
> The genetic mutation process is an probability based process. And
> And even if the X-Ray Radiation wouldn`t be dangerous there still
> remains the (ordinary) electro-magnetic field problem. 
> For example: It isn`t allowed (in some states) to build a school
> under an high-voltage-cable. Or the problem mentioned in my
> first message about the mobile telephones. 
> 
> I don`t want to frighten anyone here but I think that it`s really
> necessary to look for information about the problem cause brain
> cancer isn`t funny at all.

Well, from the reading I've done, the EM field problem is seriously
overrated.  No consistant evidence or mechanisms: it has more to do
with politics than science right now.

And small B&W CRTs are used in camcorder viewfinders: mine will put out 
only twice as much emissons: you don't see anyone trying to ban these
camcorder viewfinders, do you?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| My life is Hardware,                    |                              | 
| my destiny is Software,                 |         Dave Stampe          |
| my CPU is Wetware...                    |                              | 
| Anybody got a SDB I can borrow?         | dstamp@watserv1.uwaterloo.ca |
__________________________________________________________________________
From: gt1926b@prism.gatech.edu (NIX,MORRIS LAMAR)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: sex & violence in VR
Date: 15 Apr 92 03:25:51 GMT
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu



Actually, I don't worry about the military usage of VR.  After all, back in the
'40's it was the governments who really started pushing computer development.
Britain used 'em for code-cracking, and I believe that the US wanted theirs
to plot trajectories for artillery or something along those lines.  And, of
course, there was the space race in the '60's.

And we all know what a horrible place the world has become because of this
government-sponsored technology...

Moral:  Even the darkest of government plots can go awry and help someone ;).

Later...

-- 
Morris (Marty) Nix                    |  "I'm Q.  If I didn't know, I'd be less 
uucp:     ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,    |   than what I am."
purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!gt1926b  |     --Q (from Q-in-Law)
Internet: gt1926b@prism.gatech.edu    |   
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: TOBIAS@bonnie.physik.uni-stuttgart.de
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: TECH: Radiation
Date: 6 Apr 92 09:30:00 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Apr6.145721.5744
Organization: University of Stuttgart, FRG
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


> Don't worry about.  Monochrome television picture tubes use about 8000
> volts on their second anode, as opposed to 35000 for color TV CRTs.
> This means that X-ray production is negligable.  Also, in a HMD the
> brightness is quite low, so the beam current (and thus X-ray output)
> is even lower!

 The question still is, what`s negligable ???
 The genetic mutation process is an probability based process. And
 on the other hand X-ray Radiation forced by acceleration of electrons
 with low voltage can also lead to SOME (of course `few`) high-energetic
 Photons. Since there aren`t any studies known to me about the risk
 I am very careful about that thing. 
 And even if the X-Ray Radiation wouldn`t be dangerous there still
 remains the (ordinary) electro-magnetic field problem. 
 For example: It isn`t allowed (in some states) to build a school
 under an high-voltage-cable. Or the problem mentioned in my
 first message about the mobile telephones. 
 
 I don`t want to frighten anyone here but I think that it`s really
 necessary to look for information about the problem cause brain
 cancer isn`t funny at all.

 Bye. Tobias.
From: Curt.Shehow@p33.f75.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Curt Shehow)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Sex & Violence in VR
Date: 13 Apr 92 07:19:46 GMT
Organization: FidoNet node 1:3603/75.33 - Psycho.FidoNet.Org, Clearwater FL
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


12 Apr 92, stevey@cs.washington.edu (Stephen Yegge) writes:

 SY> BTW, has anyone on this group played Ultima Underworld?  Sheesh, I'm
 SY> having NIGHTMARES about it already...closest thing to VR *I've* every
 SY> come across.

 I've been playing it  for a few days. It's  not quite virtual reality (CGW took
 them to task for advertising it as a 'virtual-reality epic'.) but it's close. M
y  definiton of VR doesn't  included having to scoot a mouse around
for hours...
           Cs.

--  
Internet: Curt.Shehow@p33.f75.n3603.z1.FIDONET.ORG
UUCP: ...!uunet!ndcc!tct!psycho!75.33!Curt.Shehow
Note:psycho is a free gateway between Usenet & Fidonet. For info write to
     root@psycho.fidonet.org.
From: ml4477@csc.albany.edu (   Sting   )
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: TECH: VR Studio Demo?
Date: 8 Apr 92 00:46:41 GMT
Organization: State University of New York at Albany
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


In article <1992Apr7.201556.17352@u.washington.edu> cyclone@netcom.com (Bill She
ppard) writes:
>
>So has anyone solved the adventure?  I can only find 2 gold bars, and can't
>make sense of the pyramids/cubes on top of the store.
>
        I am about in the same place.  I also found a rope in a room with
large walls swinging back and forth.  It was located on a platform moving
up and down from a lower platform.  I have been trying to get on the platform
so that I could go down to the lower platform and see what is down there.
Also,   sometimes I can fly and sometimes I cannot,  whats up...?  If anyinfo
is learned, please post or send me e-mail.   Thanks alot....


>-- 
>**************************** cyclone@netcom.com  ******************************
>*                          Witty Signature Pending                            *
>*                      Applications Now Being Accepted...                     *
>*******************************************************************************


---
  ___________________________________________________________________________
 /    **   ****                                    |     World Cup 1994      \
|    **   **  **   Marc A. Lefebvre                |        --USA--           |
|   **   **    **   Computer Science Department    |Go  Albany Capitals -APSL |
|  **   **  *   **   University of Albany          |--------------------------|
| *******  ********                                | "Don't Drink and Derive" |
|               "I'd rather be windsurfing!"       `--------------------------|
|  ml4477@sarah.albany.edu   ml4477@rachel.albany.edu   marc@nick.csh.rit.edu |
 \___________________________________________________________________________/
From: cmcl2!panix.com!entropy@uunet.UU.NET (Daniel Gross)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: TECH: Using TI340x0
Date: 6 Apr 92 17:45:25 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu


In <1992Apr5.235558.23138@watserv1.waterloo.edu> dstamp@watserv1.waterloo.edu (D
ave Stampe-Psy+Eng) writes:

>sorrow@oak.circa.ufl.edu writes:
[stuff deleted]
>>My question is, these boards are popular for CAD, but has anyone used
>>them for VR?  If not, why not?  It seems that a TI34020 based system
>>with a TI34082, along with a 486 and an i860, would make a fairly
>>inexpensive and EXTREMELY fast VR system.  Cost would be around 15,000
>>dollars for the hardware ( i.e. processors ).  The TI34020 board
>>can be had for a bit over a 1000, and the FPU is something like 200 0dolalrs.
>>the i860 would be the most expensive processor.

>Why use the TI chip at all, if you're going to use an i860?  It does
>the floating point far faster and supports Z-buffering and Gourand
>shading in hardware.  While the TI chip only does trapezoid fills
>w/o Z-buffering.

>Speed is pretty good on the i860 too.  For "photorealistic" type
>VR work (as opposed to flat, depth-sorted polys) I'd prefer the
>i860 myself.  But of course the TI chip IS cheaper.

A few questions come to mind regarding this exchange:

a) I agree with Dave on the irrelevance of pairing a TI with an
860. Why, then, did Hercules decided to slap both chips on the
Graphics Workstation? Is there some rationale for the combo
that eludes me (and Dave)?

b) I have heard disqueting rumors from other newsgroups (e.g. 
comp.sys.intel, comp.parallel) that Intel is discreetly diminishing
support for the i860. This is unfortunate since it represents the
company's best work to date on silicon, and is at present the
closest thing we have to the ideal VR chip (hardware graphics,
pipelined instructions, excellent MIPS/$, great floating point)
in spite of its drawbacks (dreadful intruction set, poor 3rd-party
vendor support, and it's easily a 4-month hack to port WorldTool
to the i860 IPX/UNIX environment).

My question is: what is the consensus among participants in this
newsgroup as to the continued viability of the i860, vs. say,
MIPS or SPARC (support for which doesn't look to be fading for
many years to come)? I'm working on a hardware spec for a VR
platform and just settled on the 860, but now I worry.
 
I know, I know, there all just Turing Machines... all the same,
I'd like to have executables with a half-life greater than that
of CP/M :-)....


-- 
  Daniel Gross              \  My opinions ALWAYS
  FLOW Research, Inc.       |  reflect those of my company.
  entropy@panix.com         |  If yours don't, consider quitting.
From: tom@genie.slhs.udel.edu (tom)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: TECH: Announcement of the release of Tierra V3.1
Date: 15 Apr 92 18:38:34 GMT
Organization: University of Washington
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu



[Moderator (Mark):  This message has been chopped short by me to avoid 
        posting something large that was not directly applicable.
        The ftp site talked about is tierra.slhs.udel.edu, 
        128.175.41.34.]

                             TIERRA UPDATE:
     (Release of Tierra V3.1, Beagle source code, ALmond source code,
            Mailing Lists, Abstract, Publications, Lectures)

This message contains:

1) Announcement of the release of Tierra V3.1
2) Beagle source code now available
3) ALmond source code and libraries now available
4) Tierra mailing lists
5) How to get the code
6) List of related publications and upcoming lectures
7) Abstract describing Tierra

1) Announcement of the release of Tierra V3.1

     A new version of Tierra, V3.1, is now available in the ftp site, or
by mail on DOS disks.  The new version has the following features:

a) The bugs are out.  In August 1991, there was a major revision resulting
   in V3.0.  Some bugs were introduced in that revision, and they have been
   eliminated.  The V3.0 bugs are documented in the ``Known Bugs'' section
   of the V3.1 Tierra.doc file.  If you have modified V3.0 so that you don`t
   plan to move up to V3.1, you should fix the bugs in your personal version.

b) A nifty user interface has been added by Dan Pirone.  This allows you to
   interact with a running Tierra, and optionally view running frequency
   distributions of size or genotype classes, among other things.

c) Tested on many platforms.  V3.0 did not compile well on the RS6000 or
   the NeXT.  V3.1 has been tested on many platforms, and the Makefile
   includes options for most platforms.  It should now compile with no
   modification just about anywhere.

d) DOS memory management has been improved, so that for reasonable soup sizes
   Tierra will not run out of memory, and should be able to run indefinitely
   on a DOS machine.  Work is continuing on this front.  The version in
   the ftp site will get confused and come down unnecessarily under some
   circumstances.  If this is an issue for you, stay tuned, it should
   be fixed soon.
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: montefus@ghost.dsi.unimi.it (diego montefusco)
Subject: Re: TECH: Using TI340x0
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: Computer Science Dep. - Milan University
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 1992 12:23:20 GMT


dstamp@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Dave Stampe-Psy+Eng) writes:


>Why use the TI chip at all, if you're going to use an i860?  It does
>the floating point far faster and supports Z-buffering and Gourand
>shading in hardware.  While the TI chip only does trapezoid fills
>w/o Z-buffering.

>Speed is pretty good on the i860 too.  For "photorealistic" type
>wo opposed to flat, depth-sorted polys) I'd prefer the
>i860 myself.  But of course the TI chip IS cheaper.


I have just one question: if the i860 is SO good in rendering, why does
ProVision use, for the graphic boards, the i860 (for 3D trasformations) and
a Toshiba HSP Polygon Processor for the Gouraud rendering?
I must admit that I don't know the performances of both the TI34020 and the 
HSP, nor their prices, so I can't tell if the TI340x0 debate can properly
turned into a HSP debate.

        Bye,

                        Diego


P.S. Hi Bob! Have you seen my .signature?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Diego Montefusco        Dipartimento di Scienze dell' Informazione
Via Pirano 4                      Universita' di Milano
20127 MILANO                  montefus@hp1.sm.dsi.unimi.it 
  ITALIA                      
(02) 27001467               - You're persistent, Bob said -
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Diego Montefusco        Dipartimento di Scienze dell' Informazione
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
From: TOBIAS@bonnie.physik.uni-stuttgart.de ()
Subject: Re: TECH: Radiation
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu
Organization: University of Stuttgart, FRG
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 11:29:18 GMT


In <1992Apr7.023938.4945@watserv1.waterloo.edu> dstamp@watserv1.waterloo.edu wri
tes:

> 
> Well, from the reading I've done, the EM field problem is seriously
> overrated.  No consistant evidence or mechanisms: it has more to do
> with politics than science right now.

>From all I`ve heard that isn`t true. Of course a lot of scientists say
that there isn`t any proove at all. And right they are. 
But: Something can also be true without having an proove (yet).
There are studies about the amount of cancer cases near railroads 
and high voltage cabels. Sorry, I don`t know the exact numbers but
to me it seemed to be clear that there is an bad effect. 
It isn`t any proove but one schould think about that.
If you wait till it is scientific prooved a lot of people perhaps get ill.
`more to do with politics`: Our national bureau of health always
waits as long as possible before warning the people. And they are
under stong pressure beacuse of the industry. In a lot of fields germany
has the highest allowed concentrations of toxic substances. 
So I don`t think that one could say: They are only talking (beacause of
political reason).

> And small B&W CRTs are used in camcorder viewfinders: mine will put out 
> only twice as much emissons: you don't see anyone trying to ban these
> camcorder viewfinders, do you?

Don`t know that. I don`t think that it`s very dangerous to use them
in the normal way. But if you try to build up you own VR helmet (with
CRTs) you will obviously spend a lot of time before the CRTs. And
then I suppose it can be very dangerous. Because if it is bad for 
you than the more it will be bad how longer you use the CRTs.

Bye. Tobias.
From: geoffrey@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz (Geoff Thomas)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: TECH: Specs wanted for Flock-Of-Birds
Date: 13 Apr 92 04:41:31 GMT
Organization: Computer Science,University of Canterbury,New Zealand
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu



Hi, I'm after technical specifications for the Flock of Birds tracking
system, from Ascension Technology (or something similar, I think).

I'm wishing to know update rates, size, weight, price per tracker,
and any other pertinent aspects.

Thanks,


Geoff.