Rosen et al. 1996

Rosen, J. M., H. Soltanian, R. J. Redett, and D. R. Laub, 1996. "Evolution of virtual reality. From planning to performing surgery," IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine 15 (2): 16-22.

Abstract

• Early study of VR in the medical sciences; no more just related to planning of surgery, but now also to fuse virtual patients and real patients. Expresses hopes for collaborative IVR; describes development of 3D modeling: from George the first modeled human to more complex models with muscles, to animated organs and tissue for real experience. In 1996, focus on 'data fusion', the combination of real-world data with digital data (AR) to develop new and improved techniques for surgical training. Also provide an overview of a few of many existing VR software packages at time of writing (1996): DIVE VR, MR Toolkit, GIVEN Toolkit, NPSNET Network Simulator, and Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE); new systems were anticipated to be developed due to many problems with existing ones (such as SIMNET and DIS) that related to computational power and limited bandwidth (now more or less overcome I suppose). Describes early collaborative VR systems, such as VR-Deck, VERN, and VEOS though these were (presumably) developed for military purposes.

• Does not provide detailed data on hardware/software specs (aside from producers and potential applications)