science

Future Vision Technologies

Future Vision Technologies is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Future Vision Technologies rather than just read about it. In short: Future Vision Technologies (FVT), operating from 1991 to 1995, was part of the second wave of companies working to commercialize virtual reality technology. The company was founded by a team out of the Advanced Digital Systems Laboratory in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Key takeaways

Future Vision Technologies belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Future Vision Technologies to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Future Vision Technologies from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Future Vision Technologies (FVT), operating from 1991 to 1995, was part of the second wave of companies working to commercialize virtual reality technology. The company was founded by a team out of the Advanced Digital Systems Laboratory in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The three original members, Matt Klapman, David Frerichs, and Kevin Lee, were later joined by John Belmonte. The company ceased to be an active entity when its PC card business was sold to Fujitsu Microelectronics.

Products The company produced a number of products which appear to be first of their kind in the market.

Stuntmaster Head Mounted Display (HMD) - the first consumer virtual reality headset to ship in the market The low-resolution, monocular device shipped with a patented mechanical head tracker which had fast response times and accurate positioning. The product itself was marketed and sold under license by VictorMaxx. Sapphire IME with Pixel Bus - an integrated 3D graphics card with graphics and audio output. A major innovation, demonstrated at AES 94 in Washington, DC and at SIGGRAPH 94 in Orlando, FL, USA, was the ability to chain multiple cards together across multiple Pentium-class personal computers to create a single simulation environment known as a VR CAVE. The Siggraph 94 demonstration consisted of three Sapphire IME cards installed in three Pentium (90 MHz) computers driving three synchronized Barco projectors. Each screen was running frame-interlaced stereo, allowing users wearing LCD shutter glasses to be fully immersed in the scene. Until this demonstration, VR CAVE implementations had only been implemented using high-end graphics workstations from companies like Silicon Graphics. InterFACE Portable Virtual Environment Generator

Contemporary virtual reality companies Autodesk (Cyberspace Developer Kit Group)

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Future Vision Technologies

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Future Vision Technologies claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Future Vision Technologies before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Future Vision Technologies ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Future Vision Technologies

In research: Future Vision Technologies appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Future Vision Technologies in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Future Vision Technologies is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American inventions, Champaign, Illinois, Defunct companies based in Illinois, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Future Vision Technologies outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Future Vision Technologies in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Future Vision Technologies means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Future Vision Technologies out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Future Vision Technologies in simple terms?

Why does Future Vision Technologies matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Future Vision Technologies?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Future Vision Technologies.