PC Virtual Reality

admin — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:10:37 +0000

While the level of VR interactivity increases with the complexity of the system, even a system as modest as a 120MHz Pentium PC is capable of supporting impressive VR applications, Richardson says. “You can’t dismiss the PC as a VR platform,” he says. “With even low-end PCs beginning to possess the power of workstations, you can now construct sophisticated virtual worlds without spending a lot of money.”
Synthonics Technologies Inc. is offering desktop-based VR products that aim to give everyday PC users sophisticated VR modeling capabilities. Rapid Virtual Reality (RVR), Synthonics’s proprietary software, helps users create 3-D replicas of objects and backgrounds that can then be integrated into complete VR environments for use in medical, dental, real estate, legal and general business applications.
RVR makes it possible for any PC-literate individual to construct accurate and detailed 3-D images with full walk-around capabilities using ordinary photographs of existing objects and environments, says Charles Palm, Synthonics CTO. Two or more different photographic perspectives of a given object allow the creation of a 3-D frame. Once the frame has been completed, a detailed and textured outer layer can be applied and then smoothed out using a variety of techniques that make it match the original object.
Although RVR’s output is presented on a standard computer monitor, users can don inexpensive 3-D glasses for a stereo view. “The glasses only cost about 15 cents per pair, yet they offer a convincing 3-D effect,” Palm says.
Palm notes that RVR and similar products have a wide range of uses, such as developing walk-through architectural models, creating anatomically correct models for medical and dental training, recreating crime and accident scenes, and developing walk-around product models for electronic catalogs. Other vendors of PC-based VR software tools include Sense8 Corp.

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PC Virtual Reality