Instant Hole: Windows Onto Reality

Inspired by the inventive uses of the fictional product of transportable holes demonstrated in several animated cartoons, we have endeavored to create a environment that allows us to create windows within our virtual worlds. These windows open the often closed environments of head-mounted displays to the richness of the physical world that surrounds us. We have created a video-based stereo see-through head-mounted display to enable the merging of 3D windows onto reality. We describe the many obstacles to merging stereo images generated by a computer graphics system and views of the physical environment. While this paper describes only a single implementation, the issues remain general to anyone intending to construct a similar environment and the motivation is not implementation specific. We point out obstacles, solutions, workarounds, and other issues for others wishing to attain the same goal. We also discuss the advantages of adding familiar of physical input devices to virtual environments.