LeepVR

As computer memory has become a million times cheaper, so has interconnect bandwidth for entertainment and communication become a million times wider. The main popular consequence will be a technology that provides full 360° visual immersion in simulated or remote environments. That technology is Videowrap™. Eric Howlett has designed a completely new display interface method that entirely eliminates all visual boundaries. LEEP Videowrap™ is a head-mounted video viewing and image acquisition system that provides a field of view limited, in principle, only by the very bone structure of the user's skull.

Videowrap™ renders obsolete the common belief that the industry-standard LEEP™ optics of the 1990s provided the absolute widest-physically-possible visual field for head-mounted VR displays. While proud of the original LEEP™ optics, we were not satisfied with the limitations of the 140™ visual field. Because it allows the user to see everything, Videowrap™ will enrich and transform entertainment, social interaction, travel, education and communication so completely that it will one day be said to "amplify life" for the human species. In the Third Millennium, humanity will step out of the age of screens with pictures and into the age of total immersion.

Wrap the World Around The User

Video monitors are so basic to the daily work of so many of us, and they connect us to such magnificent conceptual worlds, that their limitations as mediators of interactive experience are hard to appreciate. The key word here is "experience". No matter how intellectually stimulating the contents of the display may be, we are still regarding a flat surface — like the page of a book — or at best like a small window we are looking through. Virtual reality begins when we lay aside the book — or step through the window — and start to experience the computer-generated world from the inside.

Modern Head Mounted Displays suffer from many of the same limitations of standard monitors. They display two small stereo images with a large space between them. The images for each eye are bounded by black borders at the top, at the bottom, and on each side. So even though they attach the book to our faces, we're still stuck with a display that offers nothing more than that of a three-dimensional book. By contrast, Videowrap™ display technology wraps the three-dimensional world entirely around the user’s face.

With Videowrap™'s immersive VR, the desktop monitor or narrow angle HMD is replaced by a very wide angle stereoscopic display that affords the user the sensation of looking around and moving within another place. The view is truly stereoscopic, or truly three-dimensional, and very wide, or "wrap-around" panoramic. From the moment the he puts on a Videowrap™-based HMD, the user is immersed in the virtual world. Videowrap ™ eliminates the so-called stereo window. In the future, there will be no edge to the virtual human visual field. In the future, we will have Videowrap™.

Keeping the Promise of Virtual Reality

In two important respects, available VR systems are limiting the potential of VR.

The resolution is inadequate for all but the most forgiving applications. The resolution has been limited by LCDs operating at high magnification.
Formatting of the space in computer-generated VR has usually been incorrect, giving distorted peripheral fields and instability of the virtual world.

The formatting problem is conceptually more difficult. The world does not lie down easily on a page. Ever since it was discovered that the world was a globe, map makers have struggled with this fact, and geography pupils have been subjected to Mercator projections and orange peels. Cyberspace adventurers have a similar problem. Fortunately though, they want to see their synthetic worlds from the inside out. From the inside out, a world can be displayed without any distortion. We call this undistorted rendering of a virtual world an Orthospace.

Despite the fact that it can be done, it has not been done routinely. In the past, it slowed down graphics engines that were already too slow, and while we no longer face this particular problem, the importance of Orthospace is not generally recognized. To realize the full visual benefits of VR, the world must be mapped in real time in such a way as to provide a wide field of view without great loss of resolution. With Videowrap, we have discovered a way to provide the full human field of view.

Marketing Query by Suncho, a Teen-Age Game Freak

For some time now, the the video game industry has been the driving force behind advancements in graphics technology. The rendering technology available in the popular gaming systems of 2006 approaches what is necessary for the first Videowrap™-compatible games. Videowrap™ skull-limited display technology will provide gamers a fully immersive VR gameplay experience.

Going by the name "Suncho," Alex Howlett plays an online game called Descent. Descent is a game in which the player flies around in a ship with 6 degrees of freedom. In 1999, six years after Eric Howlett first devised Videowrap™, Alex posed a question to some of his online Descent-playing buddies:

"What would you guys think about a stereoscopic headset that gave you the complete field of vision?"

Here are some responses: (Alex's comments in italics)

"Peripheral vision would make descent very cool." —Kizarvexius
No doubt about that.
"u know what i heard is pretty cool... descent on a big monitor" —Reddough
Videowrap™ is 'big monitor' to the extreme!
"thats what we need" —Mac
We don't just want it. We need it the same way we need headphones. Without complete 3d sound we'd be lost. Without complete 3d vision we are lost. We just won't know it until we can grab the Videowrap™.
"make it and u can be rich" —Reddough
This was a sarcastic response to the 'absurd' idea that something like Videowrap™ could actually ever exist
"wow i hope he realizes it" —Mac
"imagine that connected to your monitor port:)" —Triton

Alex Summarizes:
Videowrap™ will take the 3D gaming experience way beyond the next level. Videowrap™ puts you completely inside the game. There's no better way to describe it. I saw a still demo of the Videowrap™ for one eye and I felt like I was there. It was just a picture and yet the fact that it was all around me made it so real that I was scared. The ability to look all around makes it more real than just plain stereo tunnel vision ever could. The idea of full peripheral vision sounds cool on its own, but actually looking into the Videowrap™ makes you think about what reality really is. Your reality is only determined by what your five senses are telling your brain. If your vision and your hearing are altered to respond to a different reality then the new reality becomes your reality. Videowrap™ does for vision what stereo headphones did for sound.