V-Rtifacts » Game Systems

Sega VR – Mighty Barfin’ Power Rangers (we are the 40 percent)

Tone — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:51:23 +0000

Sega (all hail Sonic!): 1991 brought the announcement of Sega VR, a $200 headset for the Genesis console, a prototype finally shown at summer CES 1993, and consigned to the trash heap of VR in 1994, before any units shipped. Sega claimed that the helmet experience was just too realistic for young children to handle, but the real scoop from researchers showed that 40% of users suffered from cybersickness and headaches. It’s fair to say that Sega undoubtedly anticipated a sea of lawsuits; as one pundit in the industry put it: “It will be like the Pinto’s exploding gas tank.”

Perfectly capturing the annoying VR hype of the era is Alan Hunter’s (MTV) summer 1993 CES intro of Sega VR:

Money quote from a teen featured in the promo: “I thought I was going to have to wait till I was old… like 30, to get VR at home!” It’s now 2012, he’s closing in on 40, and still waiting.

Much more info can be found in Ken Horowitz’s 1994 review. Four games were produced especially for Sega VR, never to be released.

Here’s some sense of the much feared “realism” which provoked Sega to pull the plug on production:

Much to Sega’s credit, their VR fail was at least an original marketing effort, whereas later in the 1990′s, Nintendo’s Virtual Boy and Atari’s (Virtuality designed) Jaguar VR crashed and burned in much the same mode (although at far greater expense.)

Yea, though he has walked through the Valley of Silicon, he fears no evil. Jaron Lanier’s rebound…

Tone — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:22:10 +0000

“Inside Jaron Lanier is a precocious eight-year-old who got together with some friends and built a spaceship,” wrote Howard Rheingold in his 1991 book, Virtual Reality, the definitive history of VR to date. “Now he wants us all to take a ride in it.”

Mnemonic’s MRG2.2 Upgrade – Augmented Reality + Kinect

Tone — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:36:03 +0000

Several months ago I shipped off an MRG2.2 to Mnemonic in the Ukraine. He said he wanted to do a few mods and some experimenting. Little did I know that he would put together a totally sweet augmented reality system, where the view inside the VR helmet combined the real world outside the helmet with computer generated interactive 3D objects. Interaction comes through a gyroscopic head tracker AND a Microsoft Kinect. I’ll let the video and the photos explain further:

and here’s what the modified MRG2.2 looks like from the inside and outside:

The Kinect is enabled through FAAST software from the University of Southern California MxR.

WOW!

Retrospective photo review of Forte VFX1 Virtual Reality system

Mnemonic — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:56:06 +0000

Forte VFX1 was the most advanced, complex and expensive consumer VR system that appeared on the market during VR craze in mid-nineties. Introduced in 1995, VFX1 was in the shops all around the world in 1996.

Hardware overview

System consisted of:

Stereoscopic HMD “VFX1 headgear” with built-in 3DOF head-tracker from Honeywell, 45 degree diagonal FOV optics with plastic lenses, 180k resolution LCD screens from Kopin, integrated high-quality stereo headphones from AKG, and microphone;
Rugged gyro-joystick “Cyberpuck” with built-in 2DOF tracker and 3 programmable buttons (there was reported that not all VFX1 systems were sold with Cyberpuck);
To make this all stuff work – system’s “VIP” card need to be installed into ISA slot of the host PC. VIP card worked in pair with PC’s video-card connected via VESA bus to provide stereoscopic imagery on both screens of the HMD. VIP card also processed all the tracking data, and redirect sound to headphones. It also introduces Access Bus hub.

VFX1 was one on the first VR systems that were sold in former USSR countries. It was very pricy for common consumers here (with starting price in Moscow – 1495 USD), but nevertheless exported VFX1 systems were sold in big quantities. Many years after I was lucky enough to get my hands on such complete exported package, originally sold in Moscow, it have additional Russian manual not included in traditional US version.

Packaging

Let’s take a close look on VFX1 packaging arrangement. VFX1 was packaged in relatively small box (38x33x34 centimeters), with bunch of colorful pictures and a lot of self-advertisement, but its Virtual Reality isn’t it? Here, take a look.

My box was damaged a little – plastic handle was broken, so for transportation purposes box were glued with scotch tape.

Buy a VR system and get free CD-ROM! Hell yeah, funny today but in 1995 this message had sense.

Package included:

VFX1 helmet
Detachable strap to helmet adjustments for smaller head sizes
Helmet data-cable
Cyberpuck (gyroscopic game controller) with Access Bus connector
VIP ISA board
VESA cable (for video-card attachment)
Audio cables with simple jack’s for headphones and microphone
Floppy disc with drivers
“Free CD-ROM!” with game demos
User manuals English and Russian versions

Helmet

VFX1 helmet was somehow bulky but well designed and well balanced; nowadays many VR enthusiasts put modern HMD internals in VFX1 shell for comfortable fit. Personally I prefer modern glasses-like design, but I admit – VFX1 sit’s pretty comfortable on my head.

VFX1 helmet had “smart visor” that can be opened to allow user to look at the outside world, while not taking off whole helmet. This visor working pretty similar to VPL EyePhone visor which were used in “Lawnmower man” movie.

Visors optics are adjustable, you can change IPD and focal distance for each eye independently. There are no knobs or something to change IPD, you need to gently move oculars along the internal rails manually. Also rubber eyepieces on the oculars are easily detachable.

Glass optics upgrade was available for additional price, unfortunately nearly impossible to found improved VFX1 oculars today. Insides of the helmet covered with detachable soft foam glued-over with fabric.

Cyberpuck

Is gyroscopic joystick, hold in mid-air, designed to play VR games while standing on foot, absolutely great with Quake. It have 2DOF tracker (Pitch and Roll), and 3 programmable buttons. Pretty neat accessory, too bad it utilizes Access Bus connector and it’s impossible to use it on modern PC’s without being re-wired.

Other accessories

Among other accessories that can be found in package – is helmet head-strap, 2.5 meters VFX1 data cable, original Forte floppy disk with drivers, and user manuals. VFX1 data cable is actually standard RS-232 26 pin Male-Female cable, which is very flexible. Nowadays it’s very hard to find such cables as spare part, even in specialized cable shops.

This particular cable marked with Forte logo, and had two warning flags:

“Do not use the VFX1 for more than for 15 minutes at a time (take frequent breaks) make sure the volume is turned down before putting on the VFX1 refer to manual for additional information”

Pretty good ad for a 1500 bucks device isn’t it? I suppose this was one of the show stoppers for VFX1, who will spare so much money on the gaming device that you can’t use more than 15 minutes at a time? But, it was good and pretty functional limitation for gaming arcades, where people play for short periods of time.

VIP board and cable connections

As mentioned earlier VIP board need to be connected to ISA slot, provides Access Bus hub, processes tracking data from head tracker and from cyberpuck. Through VESA connector it provides video signal to helmet. Access Bus was actually a predecessor to more useful standard – USB, it also provided possibility to connect many devices through the hubs (and through each-others), make hot connections on already working system (yep, that was a big step forward in RS232 COM era). However Access Bus didn’t stayed long, and I know only one device that uses it – it’s Cyberpuck.

In my system VIP card is connected via VESA to S3 Trio, it’s the most powerful video-card that provided proper VESA signal, compatible with VFX1. I found mentions from VFX1 users that proper VESA was also on Voodoo Banshee 3D accelerators, but I didn’t have this card and can’t test this.

Cyberpuck can be connected to VFX1 helmet or directly to VIP card. I prefer HMD connector because it allows playing on foot.

Turning the system on

We examined particular components of VFX1 system, and now let’s connect them together and take a look on the visor’s imagery.

VFX1 works in Windows only in 640 x 480 x 256 colors mode. Actual LCD’s (789×230 color elements) can provide wider range of colors, but utilizing VESA for transferring image to HMD – limit’s it to 256 color palette. But, this palette isn’t fixed, it’s optimized, this means that it holds any color from true-color palette, as long as palette length itself no longer than 256 colors. My VFX1 unit was used frequently in the past, but LCD’s are still bright and colors are vivid.

I’ve tried to take a few shot’s of what can be seen through VFX1 optics, it is much sharper and with fewer distortions in reality than on these photos. But anyway take a look on the desktop and on a few game-shots from Quake, Descent, and Heretic. These games are my favorites for VFX1, especially Quake1 which gives great immersive feeling even today. By the way VFX1 do not utilize depixelation filters (in contra verse to many professional HMD’s at the time), so black-spacers between pixels are clearly seen.

For stereoscopy, VFX1 supported two formats of input video – line sequential, and horizontal stereo-pair. While for running VFX1 in stereo-pair mode you need to use proper software, you can set VFX1 to force line sequential mode in windows configuration software, or use command line “VFX1.COM +t” to turn it on in DOS.

Crysis stereoscopic screenshot in line-sequential mode, suitable for viewing through VFX1

Software

VFX1 have drivers compatible with DOS, Windows 95 and Windows 98. I’ve installed VFX1 in Windows 98 SE system, and it works there without issues. After hardware installation, you need to properly configure VFX1 software to make it work. When installing software, you’ve instructed to set IRQ settings according to DIP switches positions on VIP board. You can also check tracking for HMD and Cyberpuck. Personally I’ve liked VFX1 DOS software more for its fancy graphical 3D look, but Windows version of VFX1 configurator work pretty the same.

One of the features that I liked in VFX1 better than in its “grandson” –VR920, that tracking need to be calibrated only once, software calibrate magnetometers automatically you only need to choose your geographical region. After calibration – VFX1 tracking worked perfectly for me, and there’s no need in further recalibration.

To make game to support all VFX1 features you need to have proper game patch, in rare cases game have built-in VFX1 support (like Descent, System Shock or ZAR). In all other cases you can use VRMouse – native VFX1 mouse emulator, which emulates mouse and key presses for trackers and buttons of Cyberpuck.

Design benefits

VFX1 had many benefits in its release time. Other consumer VR systems at that time provide fewer features; all of them were without any sort of game-controller that allow you to play standing on foot, sometimes with lack of good head-tracking (like “CyberMaxx”) and stereoscopy support (like “Philips Scuba”). Only “I/O Glasses” had both 2DOF tracker and stereoscopy, but it lacked in game support at the moment of release and had inferior picture quality. Besides VFX1 had biggest FOV among other consumer HMD’s.

Overall VFX1 offered immersive experience and wide support of currently available games at the time. Stylish, comfortable and well balanced HMD design received positive critics and very soon in many countries VFX1 helmet was associated to Virtual Reality itself.

Design flaws

However, VFX1 had list of fatal design flaws caused by its early production – this includes ISA interface VIP board, utilization of VESA which limited it to 256 colors palette, and Access Bus which pretty soon was out of the game in favor to USB.

To overcome some of the flaws, Forte released “Linkbox”, which allow VFX1 connection to regular VGA outputs, but linkboxes were made in very small quantities, and nearly impossible to find nowadays. Also linkbox provided to VFX1 only video signal, without tracking, which make it pretty useless. Rumored full-feature linkbox were never created.

Linkbox photo by Kevin Mellot

As possible schema to run VFX1 on modern systems – is to use old host PC with VIP card installed, provide video signal to it through video capture card (some old TV tuner), and using Forte VFX1 SDK (which is available) to program VRPN drivers to get tracking info via network.

Instead of conclusion – followers VFX-3D, VR920, and…

After releasing VFX1, Forte was renamed to IIS, and in 1998 they released VFX3D – successor to VFX1. Fully copied external helmet design, VFX3D get rid of ISA VIP card, instead it had control box, with regular VGA connection to PC. Instead of using Access Bus to carry tracking data – VFX3D sent tracking data via COM port, which became obsolete nowadays too. VFX3D doubled the resolution of VFX1 (360k subpixels instead of 180k), had better color reproduction, but had much lesser FOV (35 degree instead of 45 in VFX1) and fixed optics. VFX3D also lacked Cyberpuck, which is on my opinion – a step back. Even with overall better characteristics and compatibility, VFX3D were sold in lesser quantities.

Years later IIS changed name to Icuiti, and focused on manufacturing compact video-glasses. However they designed a new gaming HMD, which working title was X-Viewer, afterwards changed to VR920. Before releasing VR920 in 2007 company changed its name again to Vuzix.

Vuzix VR920 – almost tripled resolution of VFX3D (now it’s 920k subpixels, which is true 640×480 resolution), and completely changed its visual design to look like slim futuristic glasses which you can put in a pocket. VR920 have built-in 3DOF head-tracker, and can be connected to VGA or DVI with included adaptor. It supports input resolutions up to 1024 x 768, and drives power, audio, microphone, tracker, and stereo sync-signal via USB. VR920 have no control box, which make it pretty possible to use as mobile HMD for small PC’s or Netbooks. Latest software update for VR920 enables all its functions on Windows7 64bit OS.

Currently Vuzix focused on multi-purpose Wrap series of portable video-glasses which lacks head-tracking for VR gaming. Wrap 6DOF head-tracking module is announced but yet not produced by company.

W Industries – In the Beginning…

Tone — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 15:11:13 +0000

Chris Hand from Leicester Polytechnic offers a delightful history of W Industries, the company who brought us the various Virtuality VR game systems. His history begins in the early 80′s and takes us only to early October of 1991, not long after the commercial introduction of Virtuality’s Series 1000 Amiga based systems.

The excerpts below offer a taste of the VR buzz in 1991, but take the time to read the entire history!

A video clip from an early 80′s episode of the BBC TV programme “Tomorrow’s World” showed some of the early work of Dr Waldern. The “Roaming Caterpillar” (as it was known) was shown being used by presenter Maggie Philbin to examine a virtual room. The display was a large B/W monitor with handles on each side, supported by a flexible arm on castors covered by a concertina of rubber (the “caterpillar”). The image displayed was a wire-frame view of the “contents” of the (actually empty) room. The location of the monitor was sensed by 3 fixed speakers emitting audible clicks in a fixed sequence, with the time taken to reach microphones being used to calculate the distance. It was also possible to detect the position of the user’s fingers by wearing tubes on them, with microphones and wires attached to a control unit. By pinching her fingers together in the right place, the presenter picked up the receiver of a virtual telephone and left it suspended in space.

Their second HMD, another tethered system, was known as the “giraffe”. This featured mechanical 2D head-tracking.

The fourth device to be built was much slimmer, featuring a magnetic head-tracker and twin LCD screens. It is of interest to note that the head-mounted part of the device allowed for adjustment of inter-occular spacing. At the time it was thought that the correct adjustment of this distance to suit each viewer would be vital to the stereoscopic effect. Mr Rowley pointed out that it was later found not to be so important, as long as the exit pupil of the optics was made large enough.

In November 1990 the “Stand-Up” unit was launched at the Computer Graphics 90 exhibition staged at London’s Alexandra Palace. At the same time the parent company went into liquidation, but fortunately W Industries had been sold just prior to this to another company, which also owns the Wembley Stadium in London.

The Games That Would Be King

Tone — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 14:05:39 +0000

From 1991 to 1996 W Industries Virtuality systems defined the image of VR in the location based entertainment arena. Here in the US, Horizon Entertainment was their sole distributor. W Industries was remarkably innovative with their use of technology, but their “innovations” in finances were not so successful. Arcade operators had a difficult time breaking even; motivated by their IPO, W extended credit to these operators to bolster their sales figures; and by 1996 W was in receivership leaving stockholders and vendors less than whole.

However… Virtuality, first using an Amiga platform and later a 486 PC, achieved a remarkable quality of game play for those early years. This collection of videos will give you a flavor. Thanks go out to Fronzel who generously compiled many of these. Watch!

Virtual Boy – Another Perspective…

fronzel — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:00:25 +0000

I don’t really agree with the Virtual Boy being VR’s “nail in the coffin”. I think it was just one of many crappy products. Maybe it could have saved the VR hype for a while if it was a big success, but as it is it’s just one of the many VR obscurities that simply didn’t sell.

Actually when you look back over a 15 year distance it is quite irritating that it was such a failure – after all Nintendo always had big successes with technically disappointing hardware – after the SNES, Nintendo constantly produced low tech consoles – not crap but low tech. With Super Nintendo they were technically “on par” (or at least close) with SEGA’s Genesis. With the original Game Boy they started the actual “wonder” – offering the console with the least attractive hardware at the best price and selling millions of them as the games are simply fun. This worked well with the game boy – although even for 1989 the tech was devastatingly poor, it sold like sliced bread. SEGA released the Game Gear one year later which had a much higher resolution full color screen, faster processor and better sound (If you can call the game boy’s beeping even sound) and sold worse. They pulled the same over and over with later consoles, I don’t even wanna go into detail.

Gaming In The Clinton Years

But back to the Virtual Boy – why didn’t the low tech trick work here? If you take a closer look at the Virtual boy and play a few of the games it suddenly becomes quite clear.

The Virtual Boy was originally planned as a funky VR headset alike console. I think it originally even included a headtracker and a better display. What happened then will never be fully known. My guess is that some management guy looked at the cost and was like “OMG, thats like 10 times what we wanted to spend, cut this, cut that and take this cheap crap”. The original Virtual Boy design planned to use color screens, prolly the same displays as they were common in all low tech consumer VR helmets. Nintendo claimed that the color LCD caused users to see double – if you ever used a stereoscopic HMD you know that this is pretty much bullshit; who claims: “it has to be black and white or you see double?” Actually Black and Red in the case of the virtual boy. Fact is: back in the day, red LEDs were the cheapest available, so my guess is that Nintendo simply wanted it “cheap” as usual.

The display itself – I haven’t even mentioned the display, but maybe its wrong to speak of a display at all. What would surprise most people is that although the Virtual boy is technically rather disappointing, the “display” is a remarkable piece of tech. No, not regarding resolution or picture quality – I am not a big fan of Black/Red 384 x 224 pixel displays, but if you ever opened up one you’d be like “WTF????”. Where you’d expect the display to be, you’d only find one line of exactly 224 tiny red LED’s – and a mirror. The trick here is that the mirror rotates very fast and thus projects the light from the LED into the eye – 50 revolutions per second resulting in a 50 Hz Black&Red display. Although the “display” is nothing you’d like to watch a movie on it is still a remarkable piece of tech, low tech that surprises – i thought only the Russians were known for that.

A Half-Breed Headset (Part 1)

Another flaw was that it was originally planned as a headset – Nintendo obviously saw or played some VR arcade games and was like “w00t, the kids will love this”. In later development two things became obvious – the device was extremely heavy (It used 6 AA cells and the hardware was in the front, making it extremely heavy on the nose. The experience is comparable to the notorious Cybermaxx HMD – if you ever played a Cybermaxx you’ll know that users complained about their nose hurting after an hour of use, mine did hurt for a half day afterwards; I was already worried about permanent nasal damage… Kids and testers using the device concocted ridiculous ideas like playing it on the go or even while riding a bike which led to several small accidents; everyone knew game boy and expected Virtual Boy to be a “portable” device for sure, just from the name. After all the tripod stand looks ridiculous and people often laughed at it, but I bet none of them tried to wear this on their nose for an hour.

So we got a crappy hardware and Nintendo – so why didn’t it lead to success? If you know the secret of Nintendo’s success it becomes quite obvious – the games. Game Boy became a hit mainly because it was affordable, cheap, very portable, batteries lasted quite long and it included easy fun games that were easy to understand. I think the main problem was that the typical Game Boy customer really knew the rough specs of the device and thus did not expect a full color 3D shooter with digitized speech and rendered cutscenes.

But Virtual Boy expectations were different. The name, design and advertisement promised it – a Virtual reality console. Wow! We knew Virtual Reality from stunning multiplayer 360 degree virtual worlds, for example the first Virtuality Cs-1000 arcade machines first offered in 1991. Four years later we saw ridiculously expensive but impressive Home VR devices, most far over $1,000 – and now Nintendo brought out a VR headset for 150 bucks? They are known for their fun games, so lets get one.

People knew that the monochrome graphics would not be too stunning, but of course everyone had some ideas about Virtual Reality – and that was the worst flaw: Everyone was disappointed.

A Half-Breed (Part 2)

While Nintendo demonstrated that they understood what stereoscopy is and how to properly produce 3D effects they failed to make proper use of it. It simply isn’t enough to take a tennis title and be like “Okay lets take an old game boy tennis title, make the front character pop out a bit and end of story.”. Other than”Red Alarm”, all titles rather appeared to be 2D Games modded by amateurs to have basic 3D effects. Titles themselves are also a big reason for the consoles failure – Nintendo released the console in North America with a whopping 4 (FOUR) released games. Of these “Mario Tennis” and “Galactic pinball” were both “unnecessary” titles. Mario Tennis was a rather average tennis game with extremely simple graphics. It was one of those games you’d really just play 1 or 2 times because of the funny stereoscopic effect, but as soon as that wears off you realize how terribly boring it is. Galactic Pinball: If you love pinball you can get some fun out of it although it is quite simple, the stereoscopic effect is weak, just unnecessary gimmickry which wears off fast. Telero Boxer – one of the more innovative titles with 3D effects and 1st person boxing, is fun in the beginning, but the game is ultra repetitive, it’s a pain to play it again once you knocked down 2 dozens of opponents. As already mentioned – Red Alarm was a rather promising title, not being my kind of game, but as a “Spaceship flies through obstacle course and shoots” kind of game it seemed to be the only one that sort of made use of Virtual Boy’s stereoscopic capabilities.

When Nintendo officially buried the Virtual Boy there were just 14 games on the North American market. If you also observed the Japanese market you could perceive the reason for its failure. It’s called “Insmouse no Yakata” and it is the only attempt to make a 3D shooter on the Virtual Boy; I instantly thought they ported Maze wars from 1974. The hardware was simply not sufficient to even make a simple 3D game.

In the end the hardware was just a crappy stereoscopic gameboy. If it had been at least halfway portable and didn’t eat batteries like a monkey eats bananas it might have stood a chance. But for a console you only play at home you for sure did not want a monoscopic, single player machine with a handfull of available games.

Pete’s Virtual Boy Game Console

In the end it just goes to tell people “You get what you pay for”. People expected a Virtual Reality wonder and just got a 180 Dollar Gimmick without much real entertainment value. Why Nintendo released it is beyong my understanding – the ridiculous low number of titles and ridiculous short time on market underline that Nintendo didn’t really believe in it as well – from the beginning. My guess is that some of the higher manager was like “OMG, VR hype!!!! Lets just see how it develops, maybe it becomes a surprise hit.” Needless to say it didn’t.

What is really the worst part in the story here is the sad role of Gunpei Yokoi. While he was the key figure in Nintendo’s whole success even before they got involved in Video games, he also was the producer/supervisor of many famous Nintendo titles that made the company write one success story after another. Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Ice Climber and Metroid are just a few of the many beloved bestsellers Yokoi designed. The characters he invented like Mario and Luigi are still what most people identify Nintendo with and a commercial super success.

Among his many brilliant creations is also the Game Boy, which was sold far over 100 million times world wide.

But being grateful is not Nintendo’s strongest ability. Despite his merits, despite the remarkable effort to turn a color VR headset for 1000 Dollars into a 150 Dollar product and despite Nintendos failure to properly develop games for the system all blame was finally put on Yokoi. Nintendo had not been used to failure and it was probably over-reacted, but they finally asked the man who “built” Nintendo, the root of all success to resign. Around a year later Gunpei Yokoi got run over by a truck, he died on the scene.

Number 5 in PC World’s “Ugliest Products in Tech History” – VIRTUAL BOY

Tone — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:50:59 +0000

Nintendo’s 1995 Virtual Boy was a whole cartridge based game system inside a desktop-mounted-head stereoscopic immersive display. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi of Gameboy fame, and offered for $180 retail, the market was less than kind. It was withdrawn from the market in less than a year and now can still be found late in the day at weekend garage sales.

The actual displays were unique, a rapidly vibrating linear array of 224 red leds. The array was vibrated at 55 hz, sweeping out a dim red raster. The concept was borrowed from Reflection Technology which had introduced a monocular augmented reality head mounted display in 1990.

Needless to say, Nintendo dumped Yokoi despite his success with Gameboy, and he died in a car wreck a year later. In many ways the Virtual Boy also put the final nail into the 90′s VR craze.

Apropos of the Virtual Boy, the following G4 critique features dominant raster lines, but sadly not Olivia Munn.

AT&T Shows Us Somebody Else’s Future

Tone — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:14:53 +0000

This final segment from AT&T’s 1993 Vision of the Future isn’t too far from what’s happenin’ here in 2010, but 17 years later, AT&T is still not a player.

Part1 and Part2 are almost as much fun.

Jaron Lanier Explains Why There’s Still Not A VR Bubble

Tone — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:58:30 +0000

Jaron walks us through all eleven reasons, from Gates Envy to Movie Projectors. Strangely enough I agree!

The Top Eleven Reasons VR Has Not Yet Become Commonplace

Yea, though he has walked through the Valley of Silicon, he fears no evil. Jaron Lanier’s rebound…

Virtusphere – Virtual Hamster

Tone — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 18:16:15 +0000

This looks like the closest thing yet to a real-life holodeck! The Virtusphere is (as the name suggests) a large hollow sphere which sits on a set of computer monitored wheels. This allows the sphere to rotate a complete 360º whilst still allowing the computer to track the movments. For more information please visit www.hack247.co.uk

No related posts.

Yet Another Fashion Emergency – J D Roth Talks Virtuality on GamePro TV

Tone — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 03:52:47 +0000

The ill fated GamePro TV did a 1991 “Cutting Edge” feature on the original Virtuality arcade systems, including footage from their premier multi-player Dactyl Nightmare title. Be careful not to fry your eyeballs on host J.D. Roth’s outfit; did anyone actually dress like this? Roth incorrectly attributes the system to Spectrum Holobyte, who was for a short time, one of four US distributors for Virtuality systems. Did the revolutionary (for 1991) Virtuality system really need this infomercial?

Warning Will Robinson, Warning!

Tone — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 21:15:59 +0000

Flashback to 1992. My Silicon Graphics rep, Len, walks in the door with a guy from Sportland, a mega entertainment center down near the auto-malls north of Philadelphia. You know: pizza, birthday parties, arcade games, bumper cars, tokens, and more tokens. They’re both hyped on the potential of VR in the arcades (I thought that hype was supposed to be my job.) I was pitched on the idea of investing my sweat and money, as they were going to franchise something and make millions (billions??) The warning lights were blazing, so I settled for a cash-on-the-barrel development contract. Len arranged to lend this guy a tricked out SGI system and vouched for the helmet loaner from Virtual Research. Six weeks later the Voyager started raking in the millions at Sportland.

Fast-forward to 2 months later. Len’s been knocking on Sportland’s door for a month trying to get a purchase order for the loaner computer and Virtual Research calls me daily to see where the hell their loaner helmet was. Finally, Len and a couple of burly confederates charge into Sportland during operating hours and carry off the SGI, monitor, and VR helmet.

Read the Voyager Investors Information Kit. With cash flow like that, Len must have been crazy to shut ‘em down.

Apologies for the monotone narration – That’s part of the pitch!

Aftershock and a Fashion Emergency

Tone — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:30:05 +0000

On it’s way to the Whistlestop, this VR system (1 of 10 on tour) makes a stop at Louisville’s channel 32 early, early morning show. Perfect makeup notwithstanding, I don’t think the host was thinking that anything below the belt would be on camera. She wore the wrong skirt, for sure. These VR systems were promoting an intoxicant dubbed Aftershock. Scott, who wrote the code for the VR game speculated that the stuff was intended for sterilizing combs. Nonetheless, the combo of VR and shooter girls at the thousands of bars this tour visited made moved cases and cases of the stuff. And… don’t forget to hit the Whistlestop tonight!

Yet Another Fashion Emergency – J D Roth Talks Virtuality on GamePro TV

Regis Takes a Spin

Tone — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:54:48 +0000

You know the wave has crested when Regis and Kathie Lee make your specialty an early morning featurette. Reeg hams it up beautifully. If it hadn’t been for that 3:30am load in, it might have been perfect. Dave Polinchock provides expert narration. Quick glimpse of an SGI Indigo on the left, and the Virtual Research Flight Helmet atop Mr. Philbin. From March of 1993. PNVA3DJZPHDB

Urinated in His Pants?

Tone — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:04:27 +0000

Proving that VR doesn’t automatically lead to hurling the intrepid subject of this 1995 video wolfs down a cornucopia of fast food and hops on some VR games at Toronto’s CN Tower. The manager of the arcade facility prevaricates a bit, telling us that while he’s never seen chunks, peeing one’s pants is an actual reality. We hope that’s not in the sit-down version of the Virtuality system show…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Arcade “Player Retainer” – HeadGames VR2000

Tone — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:26:53 +0000

IAPPA 1999 brought us another stand-up VR system from New York based HeadGames, the VR2000. Based on the Forte consumer head mounted display, the VR2000 also featured the “Player Retainer.” Initially I thought this was some special magic which ensured repeat play, as HeadGames projected up to $3,000/mo. revenue for this $25k system. To my chagrin the retention system is a waist high railing which keeps players from falling over. Good move!

If anyone knows what became of HeadGames, add a comment below. The Wayback Machine shows them falling off the grid in 2001.

Display Mounted Head? – Kimera

Tone — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:43:19 +0000

The Kimera game system from Immersive Technologies appeared at the 1995 IAAPA show with a solution to the VR arcade’s most vexing challenge: how to keep the helmets from being damaged or stolen without a full time attendant. Taking their cue from the Fakespace Boom, Kimera had a floating/pivoting display, to which the game player leaned into and then moved about. Indeed, you would mount your head to the display. At 525 lbs., Kimera came with a proprietary game, Pyramid Pilot, custom designed for Immersive by the software developer Algorithm.

Another Gyro VR – Orbotron X O Tron VR

Tone — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:51:14 +0000

1995 brought us yet another Gyro based VR Game system, the X-O-Tron VR, a descendant of the original non-electronic gyro-exercise system, the Orbotron. Initially inspired by the March 1992 release of Lawnmower Man, the first gyro VR systems appeared that summer (full disclosure – my company built a prototype system for a client in the spring of ’92 and then offered our own before the end of the year.)

The X-O-Tron VR came from the same folks who designed and built the Orbotron. It had two features that nobody else was offering: a wireless HMD and the ability to spin the gyro completely upside-down and back. While the helmet wasn’t tracked, there were shaft encoders on the gyro bearings to detect the gamer’s orientation. The game electronics were a 3D0 home game system. Read more in the X-O-Tron-VR Brochure.

And don’t forget to watch the original gyro in Lawnmower Man: