NASA in 1984: "The program, MADRAS (Multi-Adaptive Drawings, Renderings, and Similitudes), is written in BASIC, uses modular construction of objects, and generates both wire-frame and hidden-line drawings from any viewpoint."

David L. Homan in 1984: "In planning Space Transportation (STS) flights, four major areas lend themselves to computer graphics modeling... To this end, a graphics modeling program has been written for a desktop computer system (the Hewlett-Packard 9845/C)." Full Paper:

David L. Homan in 1984: "The desktop system was chosen because it is easily accessible to the average engineer... who needs accurate pictorial representations of many possible physical object combinations in a reasonably short period of time..." All quotes from Homan, D. J. “Desktop Computer Graphics for RMS/Payload Handling Flight Design.” Computer-Aided Geometry Modeling, compiled by John N. Shoosmith and Robert E. Fulton, NASA Conference Publication 2272, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1984, pp. 139–143.

I think this might have been what I saw when I visited JPL as a kid, probably around '89. They put 8 year old me in a VR headset, and it was showing a wireframe rendered training sim for the Canadarm. I don't think I was ready, the lack of occlusion was confusing to me.

That VR headset mustve been a unit in itself !

I don't remember much about the headset itself, it was probably a variant of this but I remember it was in a booth, and the headset may have been on a hanging mount. No data gloves, controlling the Canadarm was done via a joystick.

We need to bring back joystick interfaces

I have been obsessed with NASA since 1989. This has never existed until today.

reminds me of the old autocad

They should start doing 3D like this again!

I saw that exact thing on my dad's computer in our basement in 1984. I remember graphics loaded very slowly.

Needles to say, this was state of the art at its time btw, and very impressive.

Wild that Elite came out that same year. NASA should have hired those boys like immedately.