The NASA VIEWlab began in 1985 at NASA Ames Research Center, developing what eventually became known as virtual environment or “virtual reality” systems. The project attempted to develop a simulator for the space station and a series of interactive experiments with the dataglove, head-coupled displays and 3D audio.
The NASA VIEWlab
VIEWlab System Prototype 3, from the The Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW) project, 1988. In the Aerospace Human Factors Research Division of NASA's Ames Research Center, an interactive Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW) was developed as a new kind of media-based display and control environment that is closely matched to human sensory and cognitive capabilities. The VIEW system provided a virtual auditory and stereoscopic image surround that is responsive to inputs from the operator's position, voice and gestures. As a low-cost, multipurpose simulation device, this variable interface configuration allows an operator to virtually explore a 360-degree synthesized or remotely sensed environment and viscerally interact with its components. The Virtual Interface Environment Workstation system consists of: a wide-angle stereoscopic display unit, glove-like devices for multiple degree-of-freedom tactile input, connected speech recognition technology, gesture tracking devices, 3D auditory display and speech-synthesis technology, and computer graphic and video image generation equipment.
VIEWlab fiberoptic dataglove prototype, 1987, NASA Ames Research Center. The earliest device for interactivity in a virtual environment and with virtual objects was the dataglove developed at NASA Ames. Based on an invention developed by Tom Zimmerman while he was at Atari Research for measuring motion of a single finger, the gloves were custom built for NASA by Zimmerman at VPL Research and later marketed by VPL as a commercial product. These gloves were fitted with special sensors to measure the bend of the fingers and equipped with a magnetic tracking system that allowed for the glove, and the hand inside it, to be followed in 3D space and the ability to handle virtual objects freely.
