Press Release:
Firsthand receives $3.4 Million NIH Grant for Health Games
VR Therapy in Scientific American
Dr. Hunter Hoffman’s feature article in Scientific American describes current research using VR for pain relief, overcoming phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder. Firsthand is supporting Dr. Hoffman’s research.
Playing Games with Painful Memories:
Designing VR Exposure Therapy Simulations for PTSD
by Ari Hollander
Computer Simulations Don’t Have to be Violent: They can give peace a chance
A discussion with Ari Hollander,
San Francisco Chronicle
Workstations
A powerful graphics workstation is the heart and brain of a VR system and requires carefully selected components capable of delivering the smooth, high-quality, scene rendering necessary for immersive display. Firsthand will deliver a system well suited to the goals of your application and people who will ultimately be using it. 15 years experience with VR systems employing workstations from numerous manufacturers gives us the know-how to keep current on this fast-moving technology and help you make the best equipment choices for your goals and budget.
Depending on the goals and constraints in your application, we have three basic categories of systems each striking a different balance in space, power, flexibility and portability. We can configure these systems with rolling carts, multiple monitors, and various other deployment rigs in order to make them maximally usable and useful:
Full-sized Workstations
Full-sized desktop, rack-mount, or tower workstations offer the latest technology, the highest level of performance and flexibility, and often the greatest cost-efficiency. These are the easiest to use and maintain and offer longest useful lifespan through upgrades. If you have the space and electricity a configuration like this will give you the most power. Full-sized workstations can also be used in networked clusters to drive CAVEs and multi-user systems.
Portable Workstations
There is an emerging range of portable computers which offer many of the advantages of desktop systems, trading some performance and flexibility for transportability and efficiency.
Notebook Workstations
A number of manufacturers offer high performance laptops for the gaming and graphics markets which are a good solution when mobility is a high priority.
