Glasstron


Glasstron was a series of portable head-mounted displays released by Sony, initially introduced in 1996 with the model PLM-50. The products featured two LCD screens and two earphones for video and audio respectively. The products are no longer manufactured nor supported by Sony.
The Glasstron was not the first head-mounted display by Sony, with the Visortron being a previous exhibited unit. The Sony HMZ-T1 can be considered a successor to Glasstron. The head-mounted display developed for Sony during the mid-1990s by Virtual i-o is completely unrelated to the Glasstron.
One application of this technology was in the game MechWarrior 2, which permitted users to adopt a visual perspective from inside the cockpit of the craft, using their own eyes as visual and seeing the battlefield through their craft's own cockpit.

Models

Five models were released. Supported video inputs included PC, Composite and S-Video. A brief list of the models follows:
Model numberYear of releaseNotes
PLM-501996Released June 1996 in Japan.
PLM-A351997The most basic model with opaque lenses and has CVBS/S-Video Input. Released June 1997 in USA.
PLM-A551997This model had a mechanical shutter to allow the display to become see through, without SVGA. Released June 1997 in USA.
PLM-1001998This model had a mechanical shutter to allow the display to become see through, with SVGA, somewhat unstable. The PLM-100 has two color LCD displays and requires an NTSC signal.
PLM-S700 / PLM-S700E1998The S700 allowed for see through mode using LCD shutters and had support for SVGA input. Its LCD had over 1.55 million pixels on a component the size of a ten-cent coin at SVGA display resolution. The S700 has NTSC input, whilst the S700E has PAL input. The S700 was released on 10 November 1998 in Japan.