A range of object location speed-up schemes have been examined using sparse data techniques. The ultimate abstraction is to represent an object just by a few salient points. Moravic has suggested the use of a special set of salient points, called interesting points, which are very simply computed. Early work has shown the capability and certain limitations of Moracavec interesting points, and refinements are being developed towards the practical use of this scheme. In the area of object and character recognition, speed-up issues that are being explored include the use of sparse images and templates for direct geometric.
Users typically wear a helmet containing twin VDUs for stereoscopic vision.
The helmet also sends head movement information back to the computer so that the scene displayed can be updated correspondingly. The user could be wearing special gloves that detect hand and finger movements used by the computer to maintain the illusion of the user being an integral part of the artificial three-dimensional world. A treadmill has also been used to allow the computer to detect feet movement. Another example of Virtual Reality equipment is an enclosed platform on which the user stands. The platform captures more general movements of the human that the VR gloves provide.