Proliferation of counterbalanced CRT-based stereoscopic displays for virtual environment viewing and control

摘要

Many researchers have felt that counterbalanced, stereoscopic immersive displays were an interim technology that would be supplanted as advances in LCDs and electronics made lightweight, head-mounted viewers popular. While there is still a long way to go in the development of truly practical head-mounted displays, it now seems clear that counterbalanced display will always play a significant role in the development, applications, and general dissemination of virtual environment tools. This paper hopes to explain the unexpected popularity of these devices, and to highlight features of these displays that have become apparent since the 1989 SPIE paper that described an early workable example of this genre. In addition, this paper describes the current state of this technology and the acceptance of counterbalanced displays in a wide range of applications since the original SPIE paper.