PC-based VR CAVE

At SIGGRAPH 94, Future Vision Technologies debuted a platform years ahead of its time. A triple pipe, stereoscopic visualization system running on standard PCs, Barco projectors, and CrystalEyes LCD glasses.

Three 90MHz Pentium PCs equipped with Sapphire IME graphics cards were connected via Ethernet and a proprietary "Pixel Bus" buffer sync. Two PCs were set up as simulation slaves controlled by the third which processed input and generated the master world state. The result was twelve frame buffers (3 stereo views, double buffered) perfectly synchronized, displaying a complex simulation at interactive frame rates (>10fps).

The application was developed with Autodesk's Cyberspace Developer Kit, a very robust API designed from the ground up with high-end VR applications in mind. John Belmonte (left) created the triple-pipe display driver.