Star Tech Journal

7
STAR*TECH JOURNAL/JUNE 1983
"NEWS BITS"continuedfrompage 6.
particular dot in the active row will be on or off,
but by varying the voltage on the column
electrodes, the dot can be made to glow with a
varying intensity. In other words, the display
can produce scales of gray. To produce color
would be difficult, but certainly not impossible.
For instance, three column electrodes could be
associated with each dot on the screen. By
placing a red, green, and blue phosphor dot in
front of each set of three column electrodes, the
panel could display all colors.
To drive the display, Siemens invented
some sophisticated new integrated circuits.
The chips not only had to be fast, they had to
produce voltages as high as 50 volts. It turned
to a special double-implanted MOS (metal-
oxide-semiconductor) process to fabricate
them. To fit them into the smallest area, the
chips are put into extremely flat packages with
flat pins for interl'acing on all sides. Altogether
12 row-driver chips and 20 column-driver
chips are required. The display and the chips
are mounted to the same piece of rigid foil to
OTHERVIDEOGAMEAPPLICATIONS
America's passion for video games may have
practical applications. New uses could help cut
traffic fatalities, and provide therapy for brain-
damaged patients.
Impaired drivers could be spotted with a
roadside video game test, says Roger Maickel,
head of pharmacology and toxicology at Purdue
University. Such an electronic test would
improve upon current breath tests by identifying
any driver impairment instead of just high
alcohol levels in the blood. Maickel suggested
the video game test to the U.S. Senate
subcommittee on alcoholism and drug abuse.
The only realistic test for driver impairment,
Maickel claims, is one that measures human
perl'ormance. "In a sense, the technology
already exists in the video games that almost
everyone is familiar with and which every
young person knows how to handle," he says.
Experts on human perl'ormance would have
to work out acceptable "scores" for persons
taking the tests. In addition, Maickel proposes
that such video game testing be built into state
driver examinations, thus eliminating the pos-
sibility that drivers would not be familiar with
the test
Creating individual tests to see if a driver
was influenced by a specific substance is
unreasonable according to Maickel. "When
there is a traffic accident, it doesn't matter
whether the cause was fatigue, or drugs -
including alcohol and marijuana - or that
someone should have been taking a drug and
didn't."
Whether or not video games become a test
for driver impairment, they have already helped
rehabilitate brain-damaged patients. Video
games can improve patient alertness, attention,
concentration, memory, and perceptual motor
skill.
Atari's games are being used for therapy at
the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit (BIRU) of
the Veterans Administration Medical Center
(Palo Alto, CA). BIRU provides an outpatient
program that offers comprehensive rehabilita-
tion services to veterans with brain disorders
ease the interconnections required between
them.
According to Siemens, the only other flat-
panel display technology that could compete
with its new idea is an all-plasma display.
Liquid-crystal displays are very low power, but
they are not bright ( they reflect ambient light
rather than glowing), and have problems with
high refresh rates and very low temperatures.
Electroluminescent displays are bright enough,
but they are costly, relatively inefficient, and
more difficult to produce with large formats.
Plasma panels require higher voltages and, so
far, can only be made to produce red images,
which are not as pleasing to look at
Most importantly, of course, only regular
CRTs and Siemens' panel are easily extended
to color. There are now flat CRTs, but they do
not possess Siemens' individually addressable
dots, which are very desirable for computer-
graphics applications. Also, in flat CRTs, the
electron beam is forced to tum some very sharp
comers to paint the screen, which then brings
about special problems with linearity.
resulting from accidents, stroke, brain tumor,
infection, and degenerative brain diseases.
BIRU's director, William J. Lynch, first
prescribed video game therapy to patients who
exhibited problems with reaction time, alertness,
memory, or eye-hand coordination. "We
wanted to evaluate the relationship between
skill at playing certain video games and the
perl'ormance of practical real-life abilities that
bear upon the patient's ability to function
independently," he says. Not surprisingly,
patients prefer video games to pen-and-pencil
tests, Lynch reports.
The Atari programs are divided into four
categories: verbaVmathematical skill rein-
forcers, memory drills, perceptual motor skill
practices, and table games. Atari's Hangman,
which places a premium on verbal reasoning,
spelling skill, and logical analysis, is used as an
adjunct to spelling remediation. Games that
require rapid mental calculations - Fun with
Numbers, Codebreaker, Blackjack, Brain
Games and Casino - offer practice in mathe-
matical skills. Brain Games was also an
excellent tool for memory training.
Several games help improve slowed eye-
hand coordination. Breakout and Super
Breakout require quick reaction time, smooth
visual tracking, planning, and anticipation.
Eye movements are not simply horizontal, but
vertical and oblique as well. The various driving
games, such as Night Driver and Indy 500,
help patients improve eye-hand coordination,
impaired reaction time, impulsivity, poor
judgment, or failure to anticipate consequences.
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Table games - Video Checkers, Video
Chess, Backgammon, Othello - require the
ability to comprehend and apply rules of play,
strategy, anticipation, and spatial concepts.
Three-dimensional Tic-Tac-Toe challenges
players to simultaneously process visual
information from three different planes.
City
With advances in software designed speci-
fically for use with disabled persons, video
games and personal computers will continue to
offer doctors a valuable rehabilitation tool and
patients a "palatable prescription".
Source: High Technology
Distributor and
Special Products Division
State
RCII
Zip