Review of the Wide5

[bobv5]

Yup, no doubt that would be better, but my way could maybe be added as a hack without too much difficulty.

[mwarren]

…The Wide5 uses two 60Hz, 1600x1200 pixel displays combined with a 6-DOF Intersense IS-900 head-tracker and their optics provide a field of view 150°×88°. The optical axes appear to diverge by 25° to gain extra peripheral vision in the same manner as LEEP Systems' Cyberface2.

… The LCDs are not 1600x1200, either, they are much lower resolution. 1600x1200 is the total resolution of the video input, which consists of four cameras; Two forward views, and two off axis peripheral views that are merged with the forward views. …

Ah, OK. The Wide5 input is a 1600x1200 signal, but the LCD displays are natively more like 1024x768 (and maybe originally were 800x600, based on this Vizard forum help request). The frames of the 1600x1200 input signal consist of four 800x600 renders/views something like:

• upper left 800x600 is a narrow angle (~90°) left view
• upper right 800x600 is a narrow angle (~90°) right view
• lower left 800x600 is a wide angle (~155° wide, ~130° high) off-axis left view
• lower right 800x600 is a wide angle (~155° wide, ~130° high) off-axis right view

The hardware then resamples the input images to match the lens distortion and outputs 1024x768 images for the left and right screens. The resampling can use the narrow, forward views for the central areas where the optics magnify the least and the wide, off-axis views for the higher magnification periphery. Nice!

It's almost like using two SBS views, a narrow 90° and a wide 155°, then blending in the best pixels to match the HMD optics.

(Edit: Updated with vertical coverage from Palmer's first post)