Is Virtual Reality Dead?

DarkZero asks: "In the early '90s, virtual reality was considered to be 'right around the corner'. Books, magazines, movies, and TV specials told us it'd be around in the next five years, and in 1995 Nintendo's Virtual Boy gave us a brief glimpse of 'the future of video games'. Well, the Virtual Boy died pretty quickly, and now, in 2001, the books, magazines, movies, and TV specials about virtual reality are gone, and web searches about virtual reality lead to web sites that stopped updating in 1996 and corporations that went bankrupt long ago. Is there any hope left for VR hardware and software in ANY fashion, corporate or independant?"

Comments

VR isn't dead...

[cr0sh]

Just far, far underground...

Check out my URL - I am one of the "underground" sites (though I haven't had much time to do anything lately) - there are others out there.

Cybermind are the rebadged form of W Industries - and seem to still be a big player in the commercial entertainment uses of VR (mostly in Europe and some parts of the US).

Other areas VR is being used in is commercial and academic research - mostly CAVE-style setups. NASA helped start up (via a grant) Flogiston, which sells the "flostation", with an interest in using it to train astronauts. The DOD has their "Dismounted Soldier" training project (a good site is Rudy Darken's site, but it appears to be having problems).

One thing I desperately want to do is republish, in CD form, the entire PCVR magazine archive (of what I have - which is all of the back issues, and a bit of the software that came on floppy). I have tried to contact the original publisher through numerous leads, but no luck (his name is Joeseph Gradecki - if anyone knows of his whereabouts, please contact me). I tend to wonder what the response would be if I did something like this. I figure it would at the minimum help the homebrew VR community (what little is left of it).