Exciting news coming from Revival Events as we count down the weeks until to their big retro gaming event in May – They’ve only gone and found a working Virtual Reality!
This unit will be available for visitors to sample.
Back in the early 90’s when VR was was state of the art and a technology that would change the world, I was working for IBM and through some contract or another there was a team of engineers that were involved in the initial setup of a VR centre. I’m not entirely sure what IBM’s involvement were (i think theyprovided the high end workstations) but short story was, I somehow managed to blag my way to accompany the engineers and a have looksee for myself.
There were three VR booths in total so I climbed into one and donned the helmet with the help of one of the engineers. You stood in the centre of the booth which some sort of roofless cage that had a padded barrier about waist height which would stop you from wandering off and hurting yourself once plugged into the VR world. I managed to grab myself a good few hours on one whilst the other engineers did their IBM engineering thang.
The huge VR helmet looked a lot heavier than what it actually was and I was surprised on how light it was considering the tech inside and what i hoped wouldn’t be a giant needle that would connect my brain to the monster 486 PC rigs 🙂
Just nippin out for a pint of milk luv.
You also had sort of wired grip that you held in one hand and this would be reproduced in the VR world allowing you to interact with the environment or in the case of one of the games, hold a sword. The grandfather of the wii-mote?
Expecting some kind of funky sci-fi tunnel effect I ‘plugged into VR’. Sadly, nothing like that…just static.
Those initial tech demos which were mainly 3D rooms that you could ‘walk’ and look around. There was nothing much to do here other than to get used to the VR helmet tracking system which relay the image on screen based to the helmet movement. You could also manipulate certain items using your digital hand which really was cool. Tried as much as I did though I still couldn’t Virtual flip the bird.
Despite the low refresh frame rate, primitive polygon graphics and camera flicker. This was fascinating stuff alright and at times you really felt part of this new world.
After the tech demo, I got chance to play a game and a opportunity to really interact with the VR environment Details are a little sketchy as it was a long time ago but I seem to recall the VR world being set in some sort of medieval/fantasy castle and I remember stone walls, draw bridges and flaming torches on the walls. I also remember the 3D sword welding skeleton that you had to fight as well….Maybe I should have taken the red and blue pill?
Well, when I say fight, what I mean was waving your VR sword around in the hope of either hitting ol’boney or parry any inbound blows. I’d like to say it was realistic but sadly it wasn’t. It was slow, unresponsive and the screen flicker gave you a head ache…..but, it was a first step into something us Tron loving gamers had been dreaming about for year.
Sadly, VR never really caught on but who knows now that entertainment technology is steering towards immersible experiences with 3D, motion control console gaming and augmented reality – I for one am really excited about those Google Goggles..sorry glasses.
Still, as a fan of older retro technology be it cool or crap, I’m really looking forward to trying out that retro chic VR booth at Revival and donning the helmet again.
See you on the other side?
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