/vr/ - Retro Games

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzJ-P2lcKaY
Descent in VR sounds nauseating but dear god imagine a build engine game.

>>9409542
ya i just found that headset it looks like some kind of torture device

>>9409527
Because it supported VR, idiot.

>>9409552
i didnt even know they had VR headsets in the 90s

>>9409527
>why is a game from the 90s asking about VR devices?

because it's Descent. Descent really was one of the earliest fully polygonal first person shooters with 360 degree movement. There were commercial VR headsets in 1994. Plus, there use to be ... I guess you could call them VR arcades, back then that would charge hourly rates to play games like Doom or MechWarrior locally against other players in death match, or whatever. I guess Parallax Software were trying to make a game that could appeal to that group too.

>>9409562
because you're dum zoom

>>9409571
im 36

>>9409573
Then you must have been so poor that you couldn't afford to pay attention.

the VR headset thing in the 90's was incredibly niche. I think they were CRT based? LCD was really bad in 1994. It wasn't super rare to see people try to make their own VR-Arcade, where people would pay money to play death match rounds of Doom or Mechwarrior 2.
Atari showed off their Jaguar VR headset at E3 1995 (the first E3 ever) , apparently playable on the floor and they had behind closed doors demos;
https://youtu.be/ioG07qR6T7k?t=738

>>9409565
VR sets and VR worlds were the raddest most futuristic thing in the early 90s. There were movies and cartoons based on the concept (Lawnmower man, Real Adventures of Johnny Quest).

>>9409682
Sega was also experimenting with a VR headset, and Nintendo had the Virtual Boy. VR was a giant fad in the early 90s. Then everyone realize that it turns your eyes into scrambled eggs after 15 minutes of usage, and the fad went away.

It's the same stupid fad as motion capture cameras that ruined the 360/ps3 generation in the late 00s, or the 3d blurays.

>>9409691
>Nintendo had the Virtual Boy. VR was a giant fad in the early 90s.

Nintendo also showed off the Virtual Boy at E3 1995:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9-oU7BWTGM

>>9409691
>It's the same stupid fad as motion capture cameras that ruined the 360/ps3 generation in the late 00s, or the 3d blurays.

Sony 2011:
https://youtu.be/Ut7ElYMknHc
"3D TV will be the future!"
John Carmack 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYa8kirsUfg
"Hey, check out my cool 3D headset that I made out of spare mobile phone parts. I'm using Doom 3 BFG as a tech demo... Wanna fund my start up?"

>>9409742
Sony getting into 3D TVs and games felt more like an obligation due to being heavily involved in 3D movies than actually believing it was the future of the living room
The multiplayer thing on the PlayStation 3D TV was kinda neat though
Unlike Microsofts fad when they went all in on the Kinect to the point where the Xbox One was built around the fucking thing

>>9409527
Because the Virtual Reality gimmick is actually very, very old, and there were doodads and programs made to work with them dating back very far. Even 8-bit and 16-bit console games had some VR peripherals.

>>9409542
Descent would be way more disorienting considering the vastly greater mobility and how you're unrestrained by gravity.

>>9409562
There was rudimentary VR stuff in the 1970s even, with the first commercial stuff cropping up in the 1980s. John Carmack of iD Software getting into VR development in the 2010s came from him trying out some VR stuff at the time, then concluding "Goddamn, this field has barely developed at all since the late 80s, I should try to do something about this."
He was pretty much right about that, which is why VR has long remained a not very popular gimmick at the side of gaming, and it's only really with the 2010s where him and guys like him started developing the field substantially that VR gaming is finally catching on some.

>>9409649
Playing Diablo's Avocado, VR was never widely popular, it was always this goofy gimmick at the fringe, requiring some oddball third party accessory or playing some novelty arcade machine. Nintendo's Virtual Boy was probably the most famous VR ever got, and that's remembered as a blunder (even though the games themselves weren't actually bad).
Someone with an interest in old games would be unlikely to not have heard of stuff like the VB, but someone who's 36 could still have missed it given the lack of impact it's had.

>>9409691
>Then everyone realize that it turns your eyes into scrambled eggs after 15 minutes of usage, and the fad went away.
I think it's more that the technology wasn't ready for it. Not powerful or sophisticated enough to have things like full, fast and smooth three dimensional worlds, nor to have stuff like reliable headtracking which doesn't induce nausea. Most of the time i wasn't even actual VR stuff, it was just an awkward attempt at 3D with perspective.
Nobody ever had their eyes damaged by virtual reality stuff, but things like the Virtual Boy had an awkward ergonomic design which a lot of people found difficult to play in a comfortable manner (people did complain about headaches, but that actually came from straining their neck sitting in awkward positions).

The Virtual Boy was incidentally hard as fuck to actually market, as you can't actually record the gameplay easily, nor convey the perspective effect through regular video. Paraphrasing a dev from one of the games, if you're playing a game, the friend you have over can't just sit by the side and look at the screen to get an idea of the game, like with every other videogame in existence, he can sit there and twiddle his thumbs, or he can wait for his turn, so the effect of word of mouth was also limited.
The games for the Virtual Boy aren't even bad, it's a small library, but most of them are decent, some are even pretty damn good, but most don't make a very worthwhile use of the perspective gimmick, you could play most of them on an emulator and get like 95% of the experience, like most ordinary console games.

VR was a thing back then, to the point where Sam & Max: Hit the Road (1993) had a scene where Sam plays a VR game.
https://youtu.be/WqDclb3mYvw?t=614

>>9409843
I should have checked the language of the footage. Well, whatever...

>>9409761
>>>9409742 (You)
>Sony getting into 3D TVs and games felt more like an obligation due to being heavily involved in 3D movies than actually believing it was the future of the living room
>The multiplayer thing on the PlayStation 3D TV was kinda neat though
>Unlike Microsofts fad when they went all in on the Kinect to the point where the Xbox One was built around the fucking thing

The movie Avatar really popularised 3D movies, which lead to 3D TV adapting the technology. To be fair, not shitting on 3D TV, as it can look really good when done right. But it was being pushed into the gaming arena too in 2010 - 2011. The motion control stuff as well.

>>9409775
>There was rudimentary VR stuff in the 1970s even, with the first commercial stuff cropping up in the 1980s. John Carmack of iD Software getting into VR development in the 2010s came from him trying out some VR stuff at the time, then concluding "Goddamn, this field has barely developed at all since the late 80s, I should try to do something about this."

I think Carmack met Lucky Palmer via a VR web community or something.

That Atari Jaguar VR Headset from 1995 was super impressive tech. But I guess Atari was in bankruptcy? Tech couldn't hit their price point.

Even gloom on amiga supported vr

>>9409932
You say that as if Gloom was widely known and popular.

>>9409527
Shutter glasses were also really popular.

A lot of monitors could just do 120hz because they're CRTs if you asked them to and lowered the resolution, which was fine because your video card couldn't handle the increased refresh rate either.

>>9409964
>>>9409527 (OP)
>Shutter glasses were also really popular.

Thinking back... the very first game that I ever owned with any '3D' feature was Rad Racer for the NES. Rad Racer has red/ blue 3D mode that can be enabled by pressing the select button at any time during play. The game came with these generic reb/ blue 3D glasses. the same type that stickerbooks would have in the 1980's.

>>9409864

Question: What killed 3DTV?
Answer: John Carmack

>>9409964
I don't know about "really popular" but they were an actual thing, true.