Barco - http://www.barco.com
Barco had a wide assortment of products interlaced
throughout the entire showroom floor. The Baron,
High-Performance Projection Table, was featured in
the Trimension Booth. The Baron is a reasonable
substitute for an Immersadesk and can handle the
coffee mug holding needs which the workbench provides.
Apparently, Dan Doolan, the audio-visual guy at UIUC,
has already established a relationship with Barco
representatives. The RetroGraphics 808s, though
not a vr diplay system would be nice for a portable
tele-presense facility.
Electrohome - http://www.electrohome.com
As opposed to Barco, Electrohome had virtually no
official presense at Siggraph, even though thay too
had projectors all over the conference. No product
literature could be found and it is interesting
how Electrohome chooses to remain a behind the scenes
player at Siggraph. However, see Fakespace below...
VREX - http://www.vrex.com
VREX had a very impressive display of 3d stereoscopic
LCD projectors. The stereo though passive did not diminish
in effect when viewd from a wide angle. Though the VR-2100
appears to only support PC, and MAC platforms, I would guess
that an O2 could fit into the scenario. The VR-2210 claims
to also only support PC and MAC platforms, however, The sales
reps when queried did confess to the possibility of a
13w3 connector cable which could imply connectivity into
an sgi workstation.
Pyramid Systems - http://www.pyramidsystems.com
Pyramid seems to have survived it's last year of losing
over half of it's personnel to Fakespace and Carpenter.
The CAVE they installed for the Ars Electronica application
was very clean. Though, I am puzzeled by the new look of
placing the transmitter flush to the supporting unistrut.
I was even more dumbfounded to return to NCSA and notice
that the transmitter in our own CAVE was mounted the same
way! When did that happen? Anyway, The Pyramid Booth displayed
both the Idesk2 and "classic" Idesk1. There's a great picture
of their MindzEye system in their glossy brochure. The picture was
taken at the SGI Detroit facility which is definately worth a visit.
Trimension - http://www.trimension-inc.com
Trimension, the new kid on the block, is a VR integrator company.
Middle man extrordinaire they aparently have little problems
crossing petty political boundaries mixing and matching products
without a care and renaming them to suit their needs. For example,
the V-desk5 is basically a Barco Baron. The Relocatable Realtiy Room
product was on display at their booth and in the Digital Pavillion area.
They were doing some edge blending on their wall and when I asked
them about Panoram systems several of the reps. converged on me
declaring Panoram their sworn enemy/competitor and that their edge-blending
system was far superior in that the coverage area of the blend was
much smaller. Panoram, like Electrohome, seems to care less about
the Siggraph conference. When I queried them about SEOS, they
confesed that SEOS was their sister company. Well, that is somewhat
like saying Microsoft is a sister company to Softimage! Obviously,
Trimension is major thrust effort by SEOS and apparently SGI is
also heavily supporting them. Robert Moorehead from Mississippi
State University was just here to look over our CAVE. They have
just received verbal approval to buy a CAVE and are also looking at
the MechDyne product. SGI was strongly encouraging them to use
Trimension.
TAN - http://www.tan.de
TAN makes it's US debut with a very sparse booth. It was nice
to get my hands on a physical brochure of their products as
opposed to browsing their web site. Their Holobench looks
really cool and their Tanorama is a complete steal of the
Panoram wall. It seems that there are more VR companies than
VR products now!
Fakespace - http://www.fakespace.com
"Electrohome buys into Fakespace". The implications of this are
fairly substantial. With Jim Angelillo moving to Fakespace
from Pyramid he has been able to bring his connections with
Electrohome to Fakespace. Jim also brings to Fakespace the
knowledge of installation process and Ken Holsgrove who
directed all of Pyramids installation operations. Fakespace really
lacked this know how. "A little bird" told me that Fakespace may
be introducing a CAVE into their product line in the near future.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tom Coffin............................tcoffin@ncsa.uiuc.edu
