Having been a veteran of the VR push in the early 90's I can actually add something to the discussion for a change. I will start with my relevant background, and then illustrate in my observations why VR died, at least with regard to arcade games.
I worked for a company called Alternate Worlds Technology back in or about 1992. We had two products, the main one being a VR arcade unit featuring a custom version of Wolfenstein 3D. The controls featured a Head Mounted display ( from flight research ) with a polhymous tracker on it, and featuring a 3 button joystick for movement and gun control. The HMD offered pseudo stereoscopic video ( one vga signal with fresnel lenses to add perspective to the visuals ) that was fairly good. The Polhemous device was an EM tracker, that allowed you to rotate based on the turn of your head. The product was marketed at least at one point under the name of the Reality Rocket.
As far as what problems we identified with the VR world, they were pretty simple.
1) No one wants to wear a helmet. Especially if someone else has worn it before them. They find it unsanitary, and I can't blame them. None of the HMD designs could alleviate this concern. Hairnets and wetnaps were provided, but in general that just made things worse.
2) The HMD's could be good and expensive, or cheap and bad. The helmets we used were awesome, but ran 10k. The cheap one's for homes were crappy ( shutterglasses, etc. ).
3) Most VR producers were using wireframe graphics, and not textured ones. Look at the Virtuality products for an example. Everything looked like Sense8's World Toolkit stuff. Think Autocad drawings that fly. As far as I know, our game was the only one at the time using textured graphics.
4) The wand and other such devices were a pain to use. We used a Spaceball 2000 for our business product, and it was pretty good, but it took a lot of practice to get used to it. The Spaceball was essentially a grapefruit sized sphere mounted on a curved stationary pad with a bunch of buttons. Essentially the idea with it was that you press it in whatever direction you want to move virtually. When describing it to people, the explanations almost always resorted to descriptions of how your head would move if someone smacked it on the side. Not a great conversation to have with a perspective customer. Add to that that the equivalent of a left click button was where the nose would be if the sphere was a head, and...well you get the picture.
5) VR Arcade consoles were too expensive. They were trying to sell our stuff for about 80k, of which a significant amount went to the parts and license fees. I think the virtuality product ran for well over 100k. Arcades at the time were spending 4k on the most expensive arcade units, so 80k was well out of their comfort level. And in general, if you can't afford to put it in an arcade, you aren't going to make it in the home.
Anyway, that company stopped giving me cashable checks, and I moved on with life. I think VR stopped paying it's checks in general and the computer world has moved on it's way as well. But it was fun while it lasted.
Paul Hurley
Slashdot Mirror
Having been a veteran of the VR push in the early 90's I can actually add something to the discussion for a change. I will start with my relevant background, and then illustrate in my observations why VR died, at least with regard to arcade games. I worked for a company called Alternate Worlds Technology back in or about 1992. We had two products, the main one being a VR arcade unit featuring a custom version of Wolfenstein 3D. The controls featured a Head Mounted display ( from flight research ) with a polhymous tracker on it, and featuring a 3 button joystick for movement and gun control. The HMD offered pseudo stereoscopic video ( one vga signal with fresnel lenses to add perspective to the visuals ) that was fairly good. The Polhemous device was an EM tracker, that allowed you to rotate based on the turn of your head. The product was marketed at least at one point under the name of the Reality Rocket. As far as what problems we identified with the VR world, they were pretty simple. 1) No one wants to wear a helmet. Especially if someone else has worn it before them. They find it unsanitary, and I can't blame them. None of the HMD designs could alleviate this concern. Hairnets and wetnaps were provided, but in general that just made things worse. 2) The HMD's could be good and expensive, or cheap and bad. The helmets we used were awesome, but ran 10k. The cheap one's for homes were crappy ( shutterglasses, etc. ). 3) Most VR producers were using wireframe graphics, and not textured ones. Look at the Virtuality products for an example. Everything looked like Sense8's World Toolkit stuff. Think Autocad drawings that fly. As far as I know, our game was the only one at the time using textured graphics. 4) The wand and other such devices were a pain to use. We used a Spaceball 2000 for our business product, and it was pretty good, but it took a lot of practice to get used to it. The Spaceball was essentially a grapefruit sized sphere mounted on a curved stationary pad with a bunch of buttons. Essentially the idea with it was that you press it in whatever direction you want to move virtually. When describing it to people, the explanations almost always resorted to descriptions of how your head would move if someone smacked it on the side. Not a great conversation to have with a perspective customer. Add to that that the equivalent of a left click button was where the nose would be if the sphere was a head, and...well you get the picture. 5) VR Arcade consoles were too expensive. They were trying to sell our stuff for about 80k, of which a significant amount went to the parts and license fees. I think the virtuality product ran for well over 100k. Arcades at the time were spending 4k on the most expensive arcade units, so 80k was well out of their comfort level. And in general, if you can't afford to put it in an arcade, you aren't going to make it in the home. Anyway, that company stopped giving me cashable checks, and I moved on with life. I think VR stopped paying it's checks in general and the computer world has moved on it's way as well. But it was fun while it lasted. Paul Hurley