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What Ever Happened to Virtual Reality?

Posted by timothy on from the it-stayed-similar dept.

bergeron76 writes "It seems like it's been ages since I heard of any advances in "Virtual Reality" technology. Was Virtual Reality just hype? Are there any new or existing projects that have made any significant inroads (aside from the first-person shooter games)? Is total virtual immersion a worthless persuit / dead industry? If not, what are the bottlenecks that are delaying it?"

3 of 431 comments (clear)

  1. Virtual reality... by Ziviyr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    See Doom 3 or Half Life newblah.

    --

    Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
    1. Re:Virtual reality... by mmp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Though the point is flying over the mods heads, the OP has a good point.

      Back in 1995-1996, VR was all the big thing, SGI and others were promoting VRML and virtual reality (on teh web!) was supposed to be just around the corner.

      At about that some, some game called Quake was getting a lot of attention in the real world. When you compared the experience of playing quake to the experience of "VR", quake was infinitely more engrossing. All the VR stuff then ran at about 5 frames per second, with less detailed scenes than quake was spitting out at 30+ fps. Quake was a successful virtual reality in that it pulled you in and you could forget it was a game (in a sense). None of the VR stuff had anywhere near the same success at making the user forget what was going on.

      The gap between the best of what people did with VR and the best of what people did with games was big enough that it became apparent that VR was not relatively successful. VR researchers were too focused on fancy hardware--data gloves, 3D headsets, stuff like that--and not enough focused on the graphics part. (IMHO).

      Look at games like Half Life 2 today. Or the MMORPGs that many people are addicted to. The reason people spend so much time with them is that they are successful examples of VR. The academic approach to it just didn't pan out.

      -matt

    2. Re:Virtual reality... by Mac+Degger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No. I think the 'acedemic' approach didn't pan out with the cumbersome, intrusive technologies of the time. That's the reason why VR was never immersive: you always felt the heavy headset, you where locked in a sensor cage...it sucked.

      But imagine it with OLED glasses, which actually do feel and fit like sunglasses. And maybe with 3D positional chips, instead of those cumbersome gyros. All you need is a halfway decent, intuitive interface (like the mouse for 2d screens) and you have an immersive VR experience which computers could graphically generate right now.

      But will the money which has already been bitten the first time round be made available again?

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      -- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?