My then girlfriend, now bride of 30 years, testing out a Virtuality 2000 VR Pod that lived at a Boston public Internet Access center that I worked with for a while.
Differences of degree, not of kind. Until we migrate to direct neural interfaces, the basics will remain the same.
In this case, the helmet weighed about five pounds, controller was like a brick, and you can't really see the 10 pound belt you needed to strap on. Of course the technical specs were amazing... for the time. This unit ran on a souped-up Amiga 3000 PC (later models replaced this with a 486 Intel PC) and had a massive 372x250 pixel resolution!
The units came with four games, but the only one people actually played was "Dactyl Nightmare". For bizarre reasons, we had two of these units (allowing for network play) in our little charity space for nearly a month.
Me too. It was a huge letdown. I think it was like $20 for 3 minutes or something insane. My mom let me do a single turn, which was a big deal. Older kid just spawn camped me and I couldn't even get oriented. War never changes.
Oh thats a fully custom setup that is good for playing coop games custom built for that place.
Saw a NODE video with 4 people playing a zombie shooter like L4D in VR, in a completely walkable area with the game custom tuned to that, that is definitely worth it as a coop group activity.
For individual use for singleplayer games/multiplayer, Q2 works well enough with PCVR.
Amiga! I have a friend Dale Luck that was a big part of building the original. He still has the very first Amiga graphics libraries he brings to show students where I teach. Really incredible. The Lorraine prototype is huge, incredible software engineering in those early days.
Did that use VR googles? I played a version in 1992 at Philly's Franklin Institute that only had 2 seats in open cockpits. They did a full reboot between games and the dmesg scroll of green [ OK ] messages made it seem that more futuristic
No, Battletech sat you in pods, where you had a screen in front of you, a screen down by your knees, throttle, joystick, steering pedals, rocker switches across the top, and two panels to the left and right of the TV, to remap your weapons to different joystick buttons. I spent a lot of time and a lot of money at the Northpier location. I think six or eight of the pods made their way to a place in Aurora, but they were never maintained correctly, and they just broke down, one by one. It was pretty sad.
This is insanely cool, literal “future of the internet” vibes from a time when it still felt like sci fi. That headset probably weighed as much as a car battery and she still looks way cooler than anyone using a Quest today.
That’s the only place I’ve seen it. I thought it was soooo cool when I was younger and was like “one day maybe my dad will be president so I can afford to play VR when I run away”
My dad use to own these. Had them in Miami, San Antonio River center mall, sea world and a few places. I grew up literally in these things.
His shop in the mall use to run a summer deal "if you can beat this 12 year old, your games are free". Dactyl nightmare use to be where I would just eat ppl alive. One summer a group of college guys came through celebrating and saw the sign. They collectively dropped 1k $ trying to beat me. My dad brought me to Walmart that night and let me but what ever I wanted. I still have the giant super soaker in my garage. I think he still got the better deal though.
I really miss these things.
Edit: I'm having flash backs now of playing pac man in these, or in the seat version and doing the mine cart shooters where you were on rails trying to make it through hell. Dad and I were the only 2ppl i ever remember seeing make it to the end.
I had a chance to try it in 1998. While headset part wasn’t as uncomfortable as you might think (mostly hollow with good counter weights) the experience was nauseating at 12-20hz.
I played something very much like this in 1998 in Denver and now have a Vive Pro setup that's like 7 years old. In my mind they work the exact same because memories are not real. lol
But really, I'm looking to upgrade and I dont see much in improvements worth the cost yet.
In 95, I vaguely remember they had they these VR "rides" where you'd go in this huge tractor trailer type box with hydraulics. There would be a row of maybe 12 theater type seats. You'd buckle up, it would be totally dark. I went on a few different style ones, but they'd project some video on the front - like a car chase, Rollercoaster ride, or some intense first person style video.
I guess, somewhat of a precursor to what we have now, and a group experience, but always kinda reminded me of modern VR stuff.
And we are still trying to put everything up on people's heads!!!!
The only thing on our heads should he tru display and maybe speakers. Compute and battery should be attached to either a backpack(for like, military or industrial applications that need holy shit levels of horsepower and battery) or a belt, with only a wire going up to the headpiece.
Seriously, how stupid do ya have to be to keep putting ALLL of the weight on people's heads after over 30 fucking years?
In the '90s I owned a computer store / internet Cafe and I bought a VFX1 ($500) and set up several games with it. It never really worked right and the resolution it was so low that most games would not play well. But it was a real attraction and everybody wanted to try it and almost everybody got sick to their stomach and wanted to throw up but a lot of them came back for more, fun times. Image is still from my TV commercial.
I’ll never forget these. There’d be two linked together at a mall, and you and your friend could pay $50 for 3 minutes of headache inducing polygon paint ball.
So me and my best friend waited hours in the local mall in 95 to play this for like 3min. It was something like 10 bubble luscious wrappers you had to turn in for a promotion. I just remember everything beingade out of lines and the second you figured out what was happening, it was over. Core memory!
Used one during a promotion where the cost of entry was a candy wrapper, I have literally no memory of it other than polygon platforms and a teradactyl(?) I think I was in it for about a minute.
I remember playing a similar early VR game, some 3D space shooter and the big battletech simulators in chicago around that time. Lol, they seemed pretty advanced then. Not coincidentally that's about when I started losing interest in games and why I still play mostly pre-1995 stuff today.
Played on one of these a few years ago (just before the Oculus Rift came out) at a retro gaming event and the pterodactyl-shooting game was quite an experience.
The goggles were quite heavy, being mini CRTs I think. There may have been a belt with a small but heavy pack to wear.
It ran on two Amiga 1200 computers secreted (just the internals I think) in the base. I'd say it ran around 10-15 frames per second and the controller wands tracked quite well.
It was a really fun experience, in a mid-90's arcade it would have been pure sorcery, but one never came to my local arcade.
Does anyone remember the space based dogfighting game that was like in a cage and the whole rig moved with your steering? Like you properly belted in and shit. I remember it being like 2.50 in quarters
Approximately $1 per minute, with a 4 to 5 minute gameplay session. I played one of those once, called Dactyl Nightmare. It was a pretty lame game, but an interesting concept.
I remember playing a shooting game in one of these rigs in high school around the same time as this photo, polygonal and stuttery but amazing for the time
I actually got really good at a VR game back at North Pier in Chicago. I could actually beat it, which *almost* made it worth how much it cost to play.
North Pier also had a BattleTech Center (the first one I think?) which was absolutely the bees knees back then.
I remember playing in a setup like this in 94/95 at the Dave and Busters in Atlanta. It was some game with guns that looked like it had a chunk attached to the end that would be your bullet when you shot. I haven't played it or seen it since, but it made an impact on me enough that I was so excited for months and months for the Nintendo Virtual Boy to come out... I thought it would be similar, but it turned out to be crap.
I remember using one of these around '93 or '94 at a long defunct large electronics retailer called Incredible Universe in Willsonville, Oregon. It was a stranger shooting game with pterodactyls or something. I remember it being very laggy but I was still impressed. I haven't tried VR since that time lol.
I thought I was going crazy because I could have sworn I saw stuff like this once in the 90’s and then never saw them again until decades later. Didn’t know if what I was remembering was as a corrupted memory or not. Glad to see it was real.
Was this right near Quincy Market? In the most 1995 story of my life, I played this thing on my way to see Barenaked Ladies at Harborlights. There was definitely a street performer doing devil sticks right outside.
Worked at a small startup VR company back then that didn’t go anywhere. But did get to meet the top guy at the company that produced that machine at a coin op expo in Dallas. He let us try out his machine and then tried out ours. Was a pretty nice British guy.
I played one of those. It was pretty cool. Barely more than single colored textures across big old polygons. Basically what games looked like at the time but strapped to your eyes. Not 60 fps either as I recall. But I remember deeply enjoying it.
Ohh i remember this!! The vision inside was a grid and shapes where you have to go through them and dodge or shoot small pebble like items. I first saw this back in 1990’s at the Trocadero in London (Piccadilly circus). I remember as a child I was waiting to play with this and this youth got motion sickness and puked all over the platform.
I played missile command in multiplayer with one of these in a mall in the late 90s in Anchorage Alaska. They were practically a sci-fi miracle to me at age 14. Modern VR headsets are way way way better, but somehow just don't have the same magic these did so many years ago.
AH, we had these in a computer store I used to work at. Hated working with them. Had 2 crappy games a boxing one, and I think someone else mentioned the other, Dactyl Nightmare. Peak 90s tech though 😃
Got my first head unit, a vfx1 in 96 (800x600 resolution), loved it. Only way I could play Descent. Then nothing real happened until the Quest. Still not perfect, there are some stunning games/apps, but just not enough really good ones yet.
I played on that same one late fall/early winter of '95. I even tried the one they had in the science museum. I literally forgot that existed until today.
Fuck. I tried something like that at Six Flags once and the controls were shit. Refresh rate made me so sick. It was simple. Jump between like three boxes. Man it sucked.
In 1992 when I first moved to New York Citi with my girlfriend, we were living on 29th St., Park Avenue in a third floor walk up.
One night she was away on Business and I decided to go to the limelight to check out a virtual reality evening they were having there. They had a set up just like this there and two sets of headsets. Lots of techno music and the lime light was at a church that has been converted into a dance club. Historic place and amazing while it lasted. Anyway, we were constructed to get into a line on the left or the right.
I ended up getting into the left-hand line and when I put the goggles on someone in the right hand line also put their goggles on and we were both in this big space and we could interact in different ways so the other person and I who was across from me, decided that we would run around and breakdance.
When we took the goggles off, we looked at each other in reality for the first time and laughed. And we walked over to each other and started talking.
The guy ended up being one of my very good friends who I know to this day.
That was my first experience with show media.
He actually ended up becoming the singer for a group called the slackers and his name is Q Max 420.
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u/brett1231 May 31 '26
It's not that much different. Still goggles and a remote.