Virtual reality games machine pioneer Virtuality Plc of Leicester seems to have won the commercial acceptance and credibility it craved for its software and technology, landing IBM Corp’s endorsement in a comprehensive agreement that will see IBM assembling Virtuality boards into ValuePoint personal computers and loading them with Virtuality software to create a low-cost immersive virtual reality system for use in developing immersive applications. The new system will be demonstrated on a joint IBM-Virtuality stand at the Siggraph ’94 exhibition, July 26 to 29 in Orlando, Florida and will be available in the fourth quarter. Terms of the agreement will be announced within the next two months, and there is no price on the system yet. Virtuality, founded in 1988 and floated last October, reckons that it has 90% of the world market for virtual reality systems. The one being assembled by IBM at Greenock will combine Virtuality’s V-Space Application development tool-kit, V-PC operating system, VR PC Accelerator Cards and Visette 2 head-mounted immersive virtual reality display, integrated into a ValuePoint, enabling software companies to give each programmer a personal immersive virtual reality workstation for creative development work. And we’re not talking fun and games here: although it is interested in the consumer market, IBM says many of its commercial custom ers want to use virtual reality technology in their daily work and the system will be pitched at applica tions ranging from medical to automotive to aerospace to architecture, with the facility to link their new virtual reality to their existing IBM applications.
