1993 Peripherals

More on the Division system now, this is really illustrating how complex VR systems used to be, and what a cool job the Oculus team have done making it as easy as they have.

Two big and complex boxes for Division. One small and simple box for Oculus. This side shows scan converters, tracker serial ports, video inputs (Division) and for Oculus DVI, HDMI and USB ports.

The other side, where Oculus have colour control and on/off buttons and Division have more tracker interfaces, Milspec HMD and Hand connectors and a set of DIP switches.

Division did sell a computer with all of this inside and high performance graphics, this is the modular version for SGI.

Two computers, three breakout boxes, 13 cables, 36 connectors or 12 different types. Simples!

Cabling diagrams for both systems - the Division system uses quite esoteric kit and many types of connector. The Oculus system is much simpler, using a few connections that didn’t exist in 1993.

One Mac Mini, still quite a lot of cables.

The dVisor HMD needs to be fed a pair of NTSC connections, so the host computer has to display two screens, with slightly different images (right and left eye). This is done by means of a rare option for SGI Indigio2 workstations that lets them drive up to four displays - the Impact Channel option. It adds an extra (GIO bus) card to the computer and then there’s this wacky breakout box - attached via a 25W3 connector - the first of many odd connects.

You don’t see these very often. Like a 13W3 monitor cable, but with 25 small pins.

It’s a flexible system, we only use half of it.

The box itself, looks like this - we use the top two, and attach cables with 3 x BNC bayonet connectors at one end, and VGA connectors at the other end. These aren’t easy cables to get if you lose one. The Rift just uses and HDMI cable and one screen with both eyes rendered onto a single screen - this is way easier, and definitely the way forward.

Our video signal makes its way from the SGI, out the ICO breakout box. The cables for use with the ICO are red, green, blue, H.sync and V.sync. We only use the colour lines though - I think it just syncs on green.

These are pretty rare too.

From there into the VGA ports on the left of this little box - this a dual VGA to NTSC scan converter. The NTSC signal then heads on down into the Division Integrated Peripheral Unit, coming in as composite NTSC on the back.

It’s a lot of work for a picture to have to do.

The back of the IPU, with left and right video feeds, serial for the tracker, serial for the mouse buttons. I’m not sure if we actually use parallel for anything, or if that was a Division internal thing. Audio is also visible - 3.5 mm audio jack on the back of the computer, splitting to dual RCA connectors on the IPU.

The IPU has connectors for one HMD and three 3D mice.

At the front of the IPU the huge round connectors for the HMD and the 3D mouse.

These do not fall out once plugged in.

The round connecters are military spec Amphenol connectors, reflecting VR’s customer base at the time. Each connector is about £70, for each side. The connectors by themselves cost more than an entire Oculus Rift.