It’s about as glamorous as wearing an old-style TV set on your head.

But the dome-shaped headgear from Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp., pictured above, isn’t meant to be fashionable. It’s designed to show images in a 360-degree view – synched with the motion of the wearer’s head to deliver the illusion of being someplace else: a cityscape at night, for example, or outer space.

The still experimental 6-pound bubble-headed helmet has a projector in the back of the helmet that displays images on a 16-inch screen right before the user’s eyes.

Toshiba has no plans yet to turn the helmet into a commercial virtual-reality product. Eventually, Toshiba believes, it will come in handy for computer games or enhancing the impact of movies.