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Re: Private Eye HUD's

On 13 Jun 1998, Bill Moyer wrote:

>   Around 1992 a friend of mine had a wearable video display device
> called a "Private Eye".  It was lightweight and comfortable, plugged
> into a standard SVGA port, and provided 640x400 resolution in front
> of the wearer's right eye.
> 
>   I've looked for the emergence of similar products since then, but
> the only headsets I've seen have been bulky, heavy, hellaciously 
> expensive affairs with head tracking hardware and high-resolution
> graphics with color (I only ever saw the Private Eye display in 
> green, which worked just fine).  Does anyone make a simple, light,
> inexpensive HUD nowadays?

The best alternative is the M1 personal display from Liquid Image:

   http://www.liquidimage.ca/vr/m1.html

It's a 320x240 256 grayscale, lightweight display.  It's quite small and
accepts standard vga and ntsc input.  I have one and it's great for
images, but text can only be viewed easilly up to 60x20.  I usually view
text with under X at 45x12, and keep a high resolution (80x25) window in
the background for things like top which work better with the full size
xterm. It's not "inexpensive" but compared to most HUDs sold by companies
like Xybernaut and Via (typically ~$2k), the $995 M1 isn't too pricey.

-Paul