INDUSTRY

Sensics, the virtual reality display systems company, today announced the commercial availability of the piSight, a high-end panoramic virtual reality (VR) display system that delivers an unprecedented feeling of space and mass in a lightweight head- mounted display. The product of nearly a decade of research supported by NASA and a global car company, piSight uses a breakthrough patented optical design that provides for a 3D wrap-around visual sensation with 150-degree field of view, 2200x1200 pixels per eye in full color. The head-mounted display weighs only 2 lbs (1 Kg) and includes an integrated six-degree motion tracker for a fully-immersive VR experience. The piSight system is controlled by a high-performance computer cluster, includes an interactive 3D viewer supported by most commercial CAD packages, supports video feeds if required and allows porting existing applications so that they can take full advantage of its unique characteristics. "The potential benefits of virtual reality are well understood, but VR deployment has been slowed by technical limitations of existing display systems," says Larry Brown, founder and President of Sensics. VR users have been forced to choose between "tunnel vision" head-mounted displays with narrow field of view and cumbersome room-based CAVE systems that, though expensive and large, fail to deliver true 3D space and mass feeling. The Sensics piSight delivers the best of both worlds: panoramic field of view, high-resolution and 3D immersion in a lightweight package. Virtual reality is often used when "actual reality" is expensive to create, dangerous to inhabit, or simply does not exist. Key applications include virtual prototyping, training and simulation, visual analytics, remote presence, education and more. With the piSight, automotive manufacturers reduce product design cycles by evaluating designs virtually instead of building costly physical prototypes; soldiers safely learn to operate complex weaponry; energy companies quickly analyze vast amounts of oil exploration data; robots can be operated in dangerous environments; students learn better by immersing themselves in a "fantastic voyage" inside the human body. Complete piSight systems are available now. Contact Sensics for pricing and detailed specifications.