Book Review: Virtual Reality Playhouse
The First Book of Garage VR
by Ben Delaney

This article first appered on CyberEdge Journal #9, May/June 1992. © 1992 CyberEdge Information Services, Inc.

OK, you don't work for a government agency or a big corporation. You don't have a million dollar research lab in the basement and your likelihood of purchasing a good HMD is just this side of zero. But you want to get into VR in the worst way. What are you going to do?

Virtual Reality Playhouse, a new book by Nicholas Lavroff, helps solve that conundrum. Described as an introduction to the technology used in VR, and packaged with a disk full of demo programs, this volume will give you some ideas about where to start your home brew VR project.

However, if you need a scientific primer on VR, this isn't the place to go. Though the book opens with several chapters that attempt to describe virtual reality and cyberspace, these chapters are often misleading. On the first page a driving game, such as those found in many arcades, is used as an example of virtual reality. The next example of VR cited is Mort Heilig's Sensorama, which while it was certainly a precursor to VR, lacked interactivity, and should not be included in that classification. The book points out that there are "no hard and fast rules about what a virtual reality system should and shouldn't have", but there is some general agreement, and it does not usually include driving games or Sensorama. Throughout the several chapters that purport to provide an overview of the technology and senses involved in VR much of the information is incomplete. An overview of applications suffers from the same problem. It is not obvious when the author is describing the actual state of the art, and when he is only reporting the hopeful dreams of the VR industry.

However, there is value in this volume, and it lies in the included software. Lavroff has collected nine programs that run on a standard PC and provide a glimpse of what high end systems provide. These include Dimension International's Superscape Desktop VR demo, and 3D Bench, a benchmark utility that measures a system's display rate for 3D objects in frames per second. There are also a couple of games, and several programs that demonstrate 3D visual effects; a random dot stereogram generator and two programs that display 3D wire frame objects viewed with (included) red/blue 3D glasses.

Probably most valuable in this group is a program that drives Sega 3D glasses to enable sequential frame 3D display. Developed by a member of the CompuServe VR Forum, John Swenson, this program is accompanied by instructions on modifying the glasses to interface with a PC's parallel port. Also included is instructions on interfacing a Mattel PowerGlove to the Parallel port of a PC. For those who are handy with a soldering iron, these sections alone are worth the price of admission.

We applaud the efforts of those who are working to bring down the cost of VR, and hope they make progress. If this volume inspires someone who makes a breakthrough, it will have added tremendous value to the industry.

This book, with its irreverent tone and shaky science, is best for youngsters and the young at heart. The included software and resources makes this a worthwhile addition to a hacker's bookshelf.

Virtual Reality Playhouse by Nicholas Lavroff, published by The Waite Group, 128 pages, softcover, illustrated. Includes MS-DOS diskette, 3D glasses: $22.95.

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