News Release For Immediate Release

November 6, 1996, San Jose, CA: General Reality Company today announced that it won the "Small Business Innovation and Research Technology of the Year Award" in the Health and Medicine category. The award was presented on October 30th at Technology 2006, the leading annual business event for technology transfer in the United States. Sponsors of the event include the Technology Utilization Foundation, NASA, and the Federal Labs Consortium.

The Technology of the Year Awards are presented annually in five categories, to those organizations whose Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) projects demonstrate the highest combination of technological innovation and commercial potential. General Reality was selected by a distinguished panel of judges for its work on the Virtual Computer Monitor(VCM^TM), a patent-pending device which uses virtual reality technologies to improve computer access for visually-impaired users. The Virtual Computer Monitor combines a virtual reality head-mounted display, head tracking device, and screen enlarger software to provide an intuitive navigational interface for magnified computer imagery, in a low-cost, portable access solution. The system was developed under an SBIR grant from the National Eye Institute.

According to Arthur Zwern, president of General Reality and inventor of the approach, "We are extremely pleased to win this award, which helps validate virtual reality as a key driving technology for the twenty-first century. The intuitive human interfaces we develop for virtual reality simulations are beginning to provide unforseen benefits to the public, just as the space program spun-off hundreds of valuable products like velcro. We appreciate the National Eye Institute's sponsorship, and look forward to developing this technology into powerful enabling products for the nation's one million visually-impaired citizens."

General Reality Company is a leading supplier of high-performance virtual reality and motion capture products for scientific, commercial, and public entertainment applications, with a customer base that includes hundreds of leading researchers, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies.