John Nilsson has come up with a really great tool for immersion in PC gaming. He’s dubbed his creation the J-Dome and already has a patent on the design. Basically its a 180 degree hemisphere with back projection. I imagine it would be possible to combine this device with a 3d-ready DLP projector and get some active-stereo 3d action like IMAX 3D. A pretty simple concept thats been done, yet something that hasn’t been brought to market yet. There’s a similar product called the Z-Dome, which was shown at the GDC 08, but those guys want like $15k for it!

One of the big issues with virtual reality on current display technology is the field of view (FOV). Monitors are only about 20 degrees and even headsets rarely make it past the mid-30’s. In order to obtain true immersion its necessary to have a display that can completely encompass the users field of view. This dome is probably the cheapest way to achieve this using existing technology.

What’s pretty funny is that I had a similar idea a while ago, but hadn’t got around to building it yet. In my design the image was projected upon a curved surface, like a half-cylinder, which would give 180 degree horizontal FOV but not vertically. I think Nilsson’s concept is probably the better one, and he’s got the video to prove it works. Anyway, it seems he needs some help bringing this product to market, so please join the project and help make this happen.

link: J-Dome // via: Kotaku

Tags: Hardware, Video Games, Virtual Reality //