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In earlier work at the NASA/Ames Research Center there was a need to develop a standard hardware platform for supporting multiple Virtual Environment display systems. Besides providing the electrical interface between different display types and various graphics systems, the platform was also required to support common auxiliary functions that were not otherwise easily implemented. Examples of these auxiliary functions include interfacing with video camera systems, recording and playback of stereo video on conventional equipment (including portable recorders), gray level calibration signal generation for display setup, generating alignment patterns for Inter Pupillary Distance adjustment and image reversing for `mirrored' image correction. The platform concept evolved through several iterations into a bus oriented, modular system employing a standard P1 VME backplane and a suite of plug-in function modules. Six systems were constructed between 1987 and 1988 and most are still in use. The platform design details (including schematics and fabrication drawings) have been made publicly available through the NASA/Ames Office of Technology Utilization. In surveying display system offerings from the proliferating list of current manufacturers, there seem to be no commercially available equivalents to this `standard' platform. Believing that such a platform would be of use within the Virtual Reality community, this paper describes the platform functions, rational and the general electronics associated with implementing them.
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