IIS

Interactive Imaging Systems
Information
Type	Private (later public as Vuzix)
Industry	Virtual Reality
Founded	1997
Founder	Paul Travers
Headquarters	Rochester, New York, United States
Products	Head-mounted displays, video eyewear
Website	https://www.vuzix.com

IIS, short for Interactive Imaging Systems, Inc., was an American Virtual Reality hardware company founded in 1997 in Rochester, New York. It was created by entrepreneur Paul Travers, who started the business by purchasing the assets of the virtual reality maker Forte Technologies, a company he had previously founded. The company is best remembered as the original incarnation of Vuzix: it was renamed Icuiti Corporation in 2005 and then Vuzix Corporation in 2007, and under the Vuzix name it went on to become a publicly traded maker of smart glasses and augmented reality eyewear.

During its years operating as IIS, the firm continued the consumer head-mounted display line it had inherited from Forte Technologies. Its flagship product was the IIS VFX3D, a PC virtual reality helmet announced in January 2000 as the successor to the Forte VFX1.

History

Founding and Forte Technologies

Interactive Imaging Systems was founded in 1997 by Paul Travers, who had previously worked in Eastman Kodak's research division on digital camera and night vision technology before leaving to pursue wearable displays. Travers built the new company on the assets of Forte Technologies, Inc., a Rochester firm that had been a pioneer of mid-1990s consumer virtual reality with its VFX1 Headgear, a helmet released in 1995 that combined stereoscopic 3D, head tracking, and stereo audio for PC games. The VFX1 was prominent enough that it was later featured in a United States Postal Service commemorative stamp collection celebrating the 1990s.

Like Forte before it, IIS was based in Rochester, New York, and the company also did defense work: in 1997 it acted as a subcontractor to Raytheon, designing display electronics for military night vision systems. This dual focus on consumer head-mounted displays and military or industrial display technology would carry through into the company's later incarnations.

Products as IIS

IIS's main consumer product was the IIS VFX3D, a virtual reality helmet for personal computers. It was announced by the company on January 24, 2000, and shipped in mid-2000 as a higher resolution replacement for the Forte VFX1. The VFX3D doubled the display resolution of the earlier headset, used dual color displays, and was built around the company's patented VOS three-degrees-of-freedom head tracking system with solid state sensors, connecting to the host PC over a Universal Serial Bus interface. In 2001, the company also released the iCOM, a personal internet browser device, as it began to broaden its product range beyond gaming headsets.

Renaming to Icuiti and Vuzix

In 2005 the company rebranded, changing its corporate name from Interactive Imaging Systems. Assignment records show the name was changed to Icuiti Corporation, recorded on July 11, 2005 (passing briefly through the spelling Vicuity in the same filing). That same year, under the Icuiti name, the company launched the V920 Video Eyewear, its first product designed specifically for consumers as personal video glasses rather than a full VR helmet. The Icuiti name lasted only about two years: on October 22, 2007, the company again changed its name, this time to Vuzix Corporation.

Legacy

Although the IIS name was retired in 2005, the company itself continued without interruption and is now known as Vuzix. Under the Vuzix brand, the Rochester-based business shifted from immersive VR helmets toward lightweight video eyewear and, later, see-through augmented reality smart glasses such as the Vuzix Blade and the enterprise-focused M-series. Through this lineage, IIS connects two eras of the wearable display industry: the consumer VR boom of the 1990s, embodied by the Forte VFX1 and the IIS VFX3D, and the modern smart glasses market that Vuzix competes in today.