Sparcchair: A one hundred million pixel display

The authors investigate whether a high-resolution head-mounted display, roving around a much larger frame buffer image, can give a user the impression of viewing a single very large display screen. A prototype is constructed, consisting of an 1120 × 900 pixel head-mounted display, an ultrasonic head-tracker, a 16,386 × 6,144 pixel frame buffer, and suitable X-window control software, as a means of studying this question. Applications can write to the large frame buffer using the window system, and the view can navigate around the image rapidly using head rotations. The prototype system, although somewhat awkward to use due to a limited field of view in the head-mounted display, shows that head rotation is a fast, convenient way to switch display contexts