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SV: HMDs

From: "Thor Harald Johansen" <>
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 1999 22:38:20 +0200

> In playing with some lasers and motored mirrors years ago I ran across a
> design you might check into. Instead of one double sided mirror it was an
> octagonal (or more I don't remember exactly) wheel with each surface
> mirrored. Using something like this might allow you to see 8 or more
> "rotations" for each motor rotation. Although you might run into space
> limitations.

Smart, but the more sides the mirror has, the smaller the projection range
gets, but I don't need much of one anyway. Do you have any idea of what kind
of a motor I can use to get the high rotation rates that are required? With
an octagonal mirror I'll still need 120 scanlines x 25 FPS = 375 complete
spins per second. I got this idea for avoiding flicker, if there's such a
thing as a material that lights up when hit by IR light (I think there is
so): If you replace the LED with an IR diode/low-power laser, and replace
the white, partially transparent surface with something that lights up when
hit by IR light, you'd have the perfect flicker remover. I'm sure that the
material probably doesn't react to light too fast, so when one retrace is
finished, the image will simply stay around until the next retrace comes.
Voila! No flicker!

I'm also thinking about the possibility of "gearing" the electromotor
driving the mirror up to a reasonable speed. Is this possible without frying
the electromotor? By the way, won't the octagonal shape of the spinning
mirror do wonders for aerodynamics? I mean, at the speeds we're talking
about, wouldn't the two-sided mirror be like a flat, big sign in a winter
storm (of course, the mirror wouldn't blow down, it would just slow down

I'm still thinking about how synchronization is going to work. With all
these lights and mirrors, there has to be some means of detecting when the
next scanline is going to be around.

As for space problems, I don't see exactly why. Just make it all in a
reasonably small scale. :)
--
Thor`n

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