The Story of Virtuality | Nostalgia Nerd
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ส.ค. 2019
- Ever since I laid eyes on these wondrous cyberpunk like machines in the 90s, I was captivated. Huge pod like booths, connected to massive, bright headsets seemed like the future; Virtual Reality seemed like the future. In a way it was, because W Industries and Virtuality created something pretty staggering for the 90s. Here was VR which worked, it was immersive and even better, it was affordable, meaning arcades, leisure centres and theme parks were quick to get their own pods installed. So join me on a personal quest of enthralment, as I look at the company and machines behind the original Virtual Reality boom of the 1990s.
Useful links;
Octav1us' TH-cam: nnerd.es/Octav1us
Retro Computer Museum Leicester: nnerd.es/RCM
Simon's Retro VR Page: nnerd.es/RetroVR
Virtuosity Systems: virtuositytech.com/
Virtuality: nnerd.es/Virtuality
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♜Resources♜
Many thanks to Simon Marston for providing a huge swathe of resources and archive information, as well as providing access to his incredible Virtuality systems.
Further information: www.retro-vr.co.uk
Zero Hour Footage: • Zero Hour (Virtuality ...
Sega's Collab: segaretro.org/Dennou_Senki_Ne...
Specs: www.arcadianvr.com/SU_2000_TE...
VR Numbers: web.archive.org/web/200602080...
2000 specs: wiki.skullspace.ca/index.php/V...
Jagcube: jagcube.atari.org/jaguarvr.html
News article: www.cbronline.com/news/w_indu...
VR Timeline: www.pebblestudios.co.uk/2017/...
Elysium: www.cbronline.com/news/ibm_la...
Insights: kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-...
Historical account of Virtuality: vrtifacts.com/wp-content/uploa...
Kotaku account: kotaku.com/the-man-whos-keepi...
Story outline: www.vrs.org.uk/dr-jonathan-wa...
VR User Discussion: forums.oculusvr.com/community...
If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything in this video, please let me know, so I can add the source in. It takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.
I worked on and with both the standup and sit down Virtuality VR systems from 91-93! I worked for Edison Brothers in their entertainment division called Exhilarama. I literally spent days and weeks playing, using and doing minor repairs of these machines. I had the high score on kills in 3 minutes on Dactyl Nightmare! What a blast from the past!! THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO!!! Edit: we had a fully functional version of Legend Quest that was installed but wasn’t available to the general public to play. I got to spend hours playing that one as well!
I remember like a biplane or plane shooting one. Was cool
I remember playing it at Great America 6 flags.
Me and and bunch of college buddies headed down to the local mall to play Dactyl Nightmare the minute it showed up. Man what a rush. It was funny to watch people from the outside of the circle cage crouching and hiding behind nothing.
Did you expect VR to get to the point it has today or did you think we'd be way further ahead than we currently are now?
@@ADreamingTraveler I don’t know if you’ll get a response from him. Last I heard, he got sucked into modern VR and hasn’t emerged since. Rest assured he’s bagging all the high scores wherever he is.
It's interesting how the Virtuality proves that even with the most primitive, low-resolution graphics, if you have accurate enough head tracking, and an at least okayish FPS, you can give a compelling VR experience.
I have seen a medical video with patients who had fear of hights. They used car for that. The grafic was like dos aera and it totally worked in showing the fear.
@@Nordlicht05 I can also confirm this still works. Played Batman Arkham VR and at the scene where Batman interrogates the Penguin on top of a skyscraper I was shouting "BATMAN YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOT WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?! WHAT PART OF YOU THOUGHT PERCHING ON A ROOFTOP WAS A GOOD IDEA?!". But yeah, the 3D effect with adequate depth can make you feel very high up. I don't doubt that even with flat shaded simple shapes people would feel like they're standing on a building block hundreds or even thousands of feet off the ground.
I couldn't agree more, DDB.
Flat shaded polygons are just timeless, if you ask me. Look at MDK on the PC, with its huge number of flat shaded polys and compare that to the fully texture-mapped PS1 port. The port looks dreadful by comparison!
VR today STILL has the same big issues, mainstream developers are largely ignoring it due to a small user base, the small user base is slow to expand due to a lack of high quality content from developers . In addition people still get sick, and the tether is hard to eliminate etc. The graphics have had very little to do with the the success or failure of VR, VR is the future and it always will be:P
@@Battleneter only a select number of people get sick and even then it goes away after awhile.
man as a modern VR user i'm so happy for the work these people did back in the day
Straight up they deserve our respect, they've earned it.
They worked hard so we could play scary VR games, but when you piss yourself in VR you piss yourself FOR REAL!
The sacrifices they have made for furries on VRChat
@@andrewigley3931 first time I tried that out, very first 'room' I entered I saw two _characters_ in suspicious positions and performing _suspicious_ actions...
I heard the girl say "i thought the people who done this stuff were weird, I don't know how I feel, I'm wondering who am I, I feel like I don't even know myself"
I am paraphrasing, but I swear she said something similar meaning to this, and, she sounded YOUNG. I mean early teens young.
The guy? He sounded older, like 20s to mid 20s older. I said to him "wtf is this, you degenerate, tf are you doing" and he replied "when was the last time you spoke to a girl" yeh fr, I said "well, prob a few months ago.... but this isn't real" I didn't get the chance to finish my reply before he thought he had one over me and says "yeah, exactly" and I assume he blocked or muted me...
What that girl said though, that has stuck with me, I really believe that weirdo took advantage of her and she felt somewhat _used_
@@matthewlane518 lmfao!
This was my very first VR experience around 1992. It was life changing. Then nothing for decades until oculus came around.
Me too! Got to play Dactyl Nightmare at Epcot Center over 3 decades ago. Wild.
I remember I tried it once at a mall. It was an airplane game. It took me a second to realize you could just look to the side. You could look all around and the image would change like you were there. It wasn't just a tv screen strapped to your face.
@@benjamink7105 I was playing in that airplane game, as far as I remember the goal was to land on a carrier ship in the ocean. It was incredible. There was also a space game, but the airplane simulator was the most impressive by far.
I'm honored to be a part of this episode!
Polygon nightmare is my love contribution to a near lifelong dream of VR. I put 4 years of dev work into it. I had no experience of developing before i started out, painstakingly to map out the only demo video i could find on youtube from that time (present in other part of this video). You made my day with this masterpiece of nostalgia and new footage of "the real deal" from the retro computer museum. Best regards / Fredrik Enmark, Dev. Polygon Nightmare.
th-cam.com/video/HsTF-OWezPw/w-d-xo.html 😅
Amazing work! I played Dactyl Nightmare back in 1992 at the Picadilly Circus arcade in London... The Virtuality rigs were in the middle of a huge room on the first floor if I'm not mistaken. I was so inspired! 12 years old! I traveled back to London several summers in a row, and this was a highlight of my stays there. I died instantly when I played, but that did not matter. Decades later, I have worked in VR and AR for several years, living the dream :)
Thank you for your contribution 👍🏽
will polygon nightmare be available on steam as well?
@@mano123456 Me and two colleagues spent a lot of money on the Virtuality machines at that arcade, it was the Trocadero. They had Total Destruction then Exorex on 4 networked cabinets in the basement, Flying Aces and Dactyl Nightmare on the 1st Floor.We played a hell of a lot of Exorex and Total Destruction.
This is a very high quality episode. It looks and feels less like a TH-cam video, and more like a produced documentary.
I’ve been making Uk tv shows for the past 20 years, and I know how effort goes into crafting something like this.
Good work, and looking forward to watching more,
Nick
Thanks very much Nick!
@@danielfinley-pesti6661 stop being a weird dick
@@danielfinley-pesti6661 what a little baby you are. You know there's a certain age you're supposed to be to create a TH-cam account right? You are well under that age clearly.
@@danielfinley-pesti6661 what the hell is your problem asshole?
Hi Pete, itz me Rachel
"When VR was 20 frames per a second"
VRChat players: That sounds awesome
as a vr chat player i can confirm that 13 fps is impressive
Tbh i never dropped below 90 fps in VRChat.
@@JanJanJanJanJanJanJanJanJan2 most people including me who have played or play vr chat last time I checked had entry level equipment, with most playing on desktop. Those that had vr a lot of the time had the bare minimum of what was needed which is what I basically had. There was of course the select few that had full body and pretty much ace gaming pcs. You need a good pc, even though vrchat in itself is a pretty low quality game when it comes to graphics, because no one ever optimizes their avatars when creating them in unity/blender. I learned this the hard way when I made an avatar, installed a bunch of hair physics and clothing physics, and realized that when looking into the mirror my fps tanked. I fixed it, but most people either dont have the know how or are to lazy to do so themselves. Edit: it's hilarious though because I play skyrimvr with 60+ mods, 4k textures, and a decent enb. And its runs 10x smoother than vrchat ever does.
My first time with vr was at an arcade. It was a blast! Will never forget it.
@@HaplessOne even back when i had my 1070ti i had zero issues. The 2080ti doesn't even spin up the fans in VRChat.
12:50 This was technically the first VR let's play ever recorded.
"Do you remember when 3D hit the theaters" will get a definite yes from everyone. Since that particular event has happened at least once for every single generation after the war :-)
What
Pretty much.
50's
70's
80's
00's
the 2020's will do the same thing.
Thank you for pointing that out. It really annoys me that the top comment here isn't one complaining about his embarrassing error claiming that 3D Cinema started in the 80s. All he had to do was Google it... SMH
I remember, back in the 1980s, when the BBC aired a specially adapted black and white movie that you could watch in virtual3d with the special glasses from inside the Radio Times. They had yellow and blue lenses. Not the standard red and blue.
@@KaiserMattTygore927 have people really forgotten Avatar and all those gimmick movies from the 10's? I mean, Avatar sucked... but it was so recent🤔
Firstly it was great having you visit us at the Retro Computer Museum. Loving the detail in your videos, incredible how much information you managed to find.
My First VR experience back in 1998 at Disney Quest in Walt Disney World. They had Aladdins Magic Carpet Ride and Ride the Comix that both used very large VR helmets suspended from the ceiling! Similar graphic detail to the Virtuality machines
Jawolf can’t wait to visit and check them out myself.
There was an episode of Bad Influence where they visted Disney, and looked at the tech behind the magic carpet thing.
I think it was Violet Berlin who did that bit, or it might have been Z Wright? I can't find the clip atm, but I'm sure it's out there.
I experienced VR at Disney Quest in 2002. The graphics where very very dated back then. The headsets were very heavy as well, I had to use my hands to turn my head side-to-side.
Think I'll have to plan on making a visit at some point probably will plan to stop by for a visit on the way back from my Dad's some time can kill two birds with one stone and save on overpriced rail fares making a detour from Derby heh.
Are you still running? I hope covid hasn't stop the museum from existing :(
The "Sword of Damocles" is an interesting name for a VR headset. It makes it sound like a wonderful experience that can go horribly, fatally awry at any moment if you know the story.
It was just named so because of the way it dangles over the user's head. Nothing particularly deep.
It’s also a great Trivium song.
@@singleproppilot I don’t think ITCOTD was even out when I left this comment, but agreed.
Back in the 90s i actually got to play one of those early MONSTER VR headsets and actually played that "Dactyl Nightmare" game. Just having to be put inside that circular ring thing and then having this massive headset with all it's wires and cables coming off it put on your head, really made you FEEL like it was the future.
"Yes, i believe we're in need of a wizard"
Proceeds to make a thief character.
Anyway, amazing tech for the time.
Pedro Boh and a 6 foot dwarf character wizard as shown. Lol
Thief is a mathomancer. He makes your stuff get subtracted and his multiplied.
Because: she's a troll.
@@justinspencer983 vyvhcdug
Ooooooo yesss, keep going baby.
I played Dactyl nightmare when I was a kid and was blown away. I'm so happy the VR future is finally here!
Same! It blew me away as a kid... I was like looking at the future in the eye.
I played it at an amusement park when I was a kid. My best friend and I were gamers and played against each other. It was a blast even if the graphics we're worse than what we were playing at the time
Me too. My first experience with VR was playing Dactyl nightmare and I was hooked. Now I have a PSVR and an Oculus Rift and am so thankful that the technology has advanced to the point that I can now have my own VR system at home.
@@Mikey48ish I'm floored that I can carry my quest in my laptop bag and use it anywhere.
Disney had some cool VR attractions at DisneyQuest in Orlando. A comics based one where you swung a lightsabre at enemies while in a fast moving vehicle and an Aladdin themed magic carpet ride. Another one I liked (that didn’t use the helmet) was a Pirates of the Caribbean attraction where you ride a boat shooting cannons and you are almost completely surrounded by screen. But my FAVORITE attraction was where you and three friends pilot a giant mechanical spider to rescue colonists on an alien world. So incredible!
They had haptic feedback gloves with individual finger tracking back in 90s and we had to wait till 2019 to get Valve Index
Yeah I was pretty baffled by the haptic gloves as well. Like I know companies that are working on the same air bubble finger tracked gloves today, but why they aren't already available is ludicrous.. the 90s must have been the future lol
Pretty insane how advanced Virtuality's stuff was, considering the tech they had on their hands.
VR in the 90s: _The Lawnmower Man._ When Nintendo released _Star Fox_ ( _Starwing_ ), I thought for sure the two would be combined for the most exciting gaming experience.
Star fox vr in the 90s sounds like the most vomit inducing thing ever. Imagine the motion sickness
@@bt3743 Do a barrel roll! dies
Why starfox? It wasn't the first 3d game, there were many before it, there were even 3d polygonal games on consoles before it
@@fandangobrandango7864: Timing-because of WHEN the two products were available. Nintendo wowed audiences with Mode 7 on the SNES, and _Star Fox_ was meant to showcase it. I had played earlier polygon MS-DOS games, but they don't even come close to the same experience. An earlier dedicated machine might manage it, but it wouldn't be affordable for average consumer before the 1990s.
This video makes it clear that the word "internaut" is long overdue for a comeback!
Correct. I completely agree!
it's so vapourwave damnit.
Small bit of trivia: its always been used in Romania, it never died here.
MoonlightEmbrace Same in Lithuania, it's still relatively popular
Same in France
I still remember when VR was an insane fantasy of the future back when the Rift DK1 was made sometime 2013. I thought to myself "Wow, VR will really be something we genuinely could use in the future." Of course by 'future' I meant maybe within the next 20 to 50 years, not just 5 years time. Now with products like the Valve Index with it's advanced controllers or the Oculus Quest being a completely standalone headset, I really feel like I'm living in the future. Now, I have no clue what the next 20 to 50 years could really hold.
Ay-Leck Aguirre in 20 or 50 years, we’ll have something like ready player one where it’s a full body and mind immersion with suits that tap into our nerve system so we can feel what goes on in the vr
@@peterc3619 Only if we can annoy Elon enough to work on Neuralink faster
Just Ghostie right?🤦🏻♂️
More powerful stand alone HMDs, better haptics. Lol
The Legend Quest show for Tomorrow's World was filmed in Hickory in Nottingham.
I helped film this, they got four of us to go around the dungeon, they asked for different parts to be filmed separately, it took about two hours.
They then got the presenter to film later the same day and we stayed while he was there in case they needed more footage.
I remember the presenter fell over the cables after he left the booth, he had a strope afterwards, their cameraman said he was a Pratt.
When playing the game you had a USB type key which you paid for, this had your character on it so you could come back each week, I still have mine.
I had forgotten about the shop this was at, funny looking back.
Cheers for the footage.
its a shame the company died just as the 3d accelerated revolution was beginning in the pc world.
MonochromeWench if they had stuck around a *bit* longer VR arcades could be more of a commodity. And since they’re arcade cabinets and you’re not buying them yourself they could’ve created even more cutting edge stuff.
It's not really a shame. "If only we had better field of view... If only we had higher resolution... If only we had better frame rate... If only we had 3-D positional audio... If only we had faster refresh rates... If only we had detailed shaders... If only we had greater polygon counts..." Twenty years later, with all of those things fully realized, the consensus remains that this shit sucks!
VR where you stick a thing on to cover your eyes/face has always been and will always be garbage. It's only fun for about 15 minutes before you want to rip the fucking thing off. Everybody wants the holodeck from TNG, and anything less than a convincing version of that will always be a failure.
@@djhenyo how's it feel being so wrong guy?
@@0Asterite0 Sorry you bought the thousand-dollar Vive, Oculus, or other VR helmet.
@@djhenyo What makes you say that? There are loads of great VR titles to play and experiences out there. Google Earth in VR is an amazing way to explore the globe digitally.
"When internauts are online, what's their favorite activity?" Shitposting, Carl. It's shitposting.
....and declaring that other internauts are literal Nazis.
@@_Piers_ gotta stick it to those huwite supremazists right?
Mopantsu As a white person, white supremacy is the biggest danger facing our modern world. My rabbi agrees.
no lads, you have it wrong.
PORN and anime girls
@@tHeWasTeDYouTh thats what I was about to say but you beat me by a week, fuck
I remember when VR was roughly 1 frame per second or less. It was called a viewmaster. You had to pull the lever to move to the next frame.
oh you poor poor man you must have wished you could die from such low frame rate
Lol!
I was about to make a comment asking where Cyberzone with Craig Charles was. And there it is. A wonderful strange example of mad 90s game show that I remember vividly.
Congratulations! Another masterpiece of the history of technology that, even in the age of overinformation, is being lost.
I couldn't watch after he said that 3D was introduced in the 80's 🙄
I miss the 80s and 90s, it was such an exciting time with new extraordinary innovations that blew our minds.
Likewise, which is why I've really been enjoying being a part of early VR. In the 4 or so years that modern VR has been around, we've gone from a low-res headset that's intended to be used with a standard controller while sitting down, to a low-res headset designed to track the movements of your body and hands, to much higher res headset with a wider FOV and controllers that can track each of your fingers. It's pretty wild.
As if new and exciting stuff isn't happening right now? It's hard to see while you are in the present but exciting shit is happening all the time, far more than ever before and it will keep getting faster and faster. Progression is a snowball affect.
And it isn't now? Tell me, how many VR HMDs are on sale today?????? I love the 80s and 90s too, it's not like they were exclusive for the reasons you point out.
- VR is getting really good, high resolution displays combined with eye tracking is going to give us near realistic animation soon.
- Hand tracking is getting actually usable without any extra hardware too.
- speech recognition is actually usable now without extra training to adapt to the speaker. (it would be practically perfect with some speaker specific training, but that is too expensive to do in most cases)
- Game NPCs are going to use GPT like neural networks to communicate as soon as it becomes computationally realistic. If you have played with A.I. Dungeon on Dragon model, you know that GPT-3 is _seriously_ smart, able to converse about practically any topic and roleplay as a character, its only practical weak point is that it cannot really make up coherent stories. But for NPCs in a game that is okay, the story is already written after all. The nice thing is about GPT like text generators is that they can be programmed with simple text input. Basically you write instructions (like context and backstory) in human language to customize the NPC, it takes relatively little effort to make a custom prompt for the neural net, and you have a NPC with a unique character.
Exactly...I haven't seen anything new or special in 20 years.
The most interesting thing is how even back then they understood intimately that latency was _the_ thing that made VR bearable.
Latency is much harder to tackle than graphical quality. You cannot just throw computing resources at the problem, you have to design smart.
Wireless communication makes it even worse. But you can cheat with it a little, for example the image is interpolated according to the head movements on the head set. So the latency of the reaction to head movements is _less_ than the wireless link. This means that a wireless VR headset should have some rendering capability. This actually helped the Oculus Quest to become a wireless PC VR headset, because originally it was designed as a standalone with lots of computing resources locally.
That’s not really hard to figure out….first person who got motion sickness would of figured it.
@@nomaschalupas2453 lmao
TBF, that's how presence works. You need extremely low latecny and high framerate in order to trick your brain into thinking the virtual world is real.
Not sure how this one slipped through 🤔. Great upload matey 👊🏻😁
Instablaster
Wasn't expecting my favorite Australian forge god here. Cheers
i remember as a kid going to electronic universe and trying on ahead seat and playing mech warrior for the first time it was horrible and weighted a ton i wanted some so bad but at a grand price tag it was too rich for me
As an Amiga nerd back in the day I was quite pleased with the fact the local Virtuality systems were powered by the Amiga 3000. I don't remember playing anything other than (Terror) Dactyl Nightmare though, and only ever saw the stand-up unit.
I'd love to find an old non-working stand-up Virtuality machine and put modern components inside it. Valve Index, VR treadmill, etc.
Although room scale seems to be king nowadays, compared to treadmills.
treadmill seems to be the much better option, it's just it's more expensive and would have to be repaired every so often.
I can’t believe I didn’t realize this was a 45 minute video. I thought it was like 15 minutes. I wanted more. It would be nice to continue with a part 2 and show the time line all the way up to present day with the valve index, oculus rift s and quest and the psvr
I was a UI designer for a VR company in the 90's that made software to allow complex CAD models to be viewed and edited collaboratively using these kind of VR headsets, as well as CAVEs and desktop workstations. It ran on SGI, HP and Sun kit, and was bought and used by the likes of Ford, Airbus and Harley-Davidson. They were acquired by one of the big CAD companies a few years later (which is when I was laid off, unfortunately) and are still working out of the same office in Bristol.
That's incredible!
Great, great, great, job! I love when you make long form docs and this one didn't disappoint.
Isn't this the WWG himself
Many thanks dude.
I still remember the pain in the neck... due to the HEAVY weight of those VR headsets...!
At least they improved the weight and the resolution. Now .. I keep thinking VR is more a "gadget"... right now !
TheFrenchy82 My poor little 11 year old head could not handle the weight and it constantly tilted on the side. How far we’ve come.
@@LetsTakeWalk lol
I gotta say I am beyond impressed with what they were able to accomplish in this realm of technology back then.
This is some great content. I admit I was unaware that VR was so functional in the 90's. It's really impressive what Virtuality pulled off with the technology at hand, and that they were able to stay afloat and even flourish, if only for a time, with a cutting-edge tech offering.
I was the gatekeeper of the boxing version of a Virtuality machine when I lived and worked over in Jersey in 94. It was housed in Forte Regent. I was nowhere near as big a gamer as I am today but I still liked games and was awaiting the release of the PS1 with anticipation. It's quite telling then that even though I could have as many goes as I wished during quiet times I only played it twice. They were pretty underwhelming if you ask me.
I played Zone Hunter in an arcade back then. Really amazing stuff. Years later I was able buy a VFX1 headset but never got it to work properly. Still have all the hardware though.
I really hope someone releases Zone Hunter for the Oculus Rift. Then I can finally play the game a bit longer than 5 minutes...
Those VR machines are forever imprinted into my memories. I remember seeing the standup ones at a local theatre and being amazed. Saw a huge room full of the sit down and standup ones later when visiting Chicago as a kid where I also saw the infamous Battletech battle pods. I was was fortunate as a child to take a behind the scenes look at Aladdin VR at Disney when we were invited by employees to a demonstration. That era was fascinating and made me forever hope for a VR future.
That Atari Research logo is the primordial skadaddle skadoodle...
24:30 How she managed to resist typing, YES PLEASE in the Sex box, I'll never know!!
@Pusalieth or because she is not American.
@@HAWXLEADER Lemme just google the guy who wrote that joke..."Myers was born in Scarborough, Ontario, on May 25, 1963, the son of an English couple from the Old Swan area of Liverpool." Oof. Maybe don't be so insecure about whatever country you come from, it's not a good look.
@@MrCorrectify Who wrote what joke? The form field answering one? well it seems fit, because the US residents use the word gender instead so they wouldn't be able to make it.
I'm from Israel being insecure is a second nature haha not really though, I just like to personally laugh at american culture.
@@MrCorrectify Flawless victory.
I just Love how any commerical in the 80s regarding the future, is just immidately dystopian.
Yeah...and it's looking increasingly accurate :(
I am blown away at what they accomplished with such old hardware. Very impressive.
People don't realize that a modern phone runs at 4 or 8 cpu cores of 2000Mhz with 3000 to 8000MB of ram
While those old VR machines were with CPU's between 10 to 33mhz, 8mb of ram and of course utilized the early days of graphics cards... also with very little videoram.
Loved the Better than Life clip from Red Dwarf!
Cool trip down memory lane. Really well presented mate, thanks for the awesome vid.
Read and green glasses for 3d was done in the 1950's, if not before. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was done this way. That was 1954.
That red dwarf episode is amazing 😅 love your video btw. The quality is fantastic ❤️
Anyone remember the 32-bit Nintendo Virtual Boy in '95? When I had a go on my mate's one, it absolutely did my head in, an aweful experience... still legandary though, lol. I've had a couple of headsets myself since, VR has come on a long way and is only going to get better. I can't wait until they're basically contact lenses.
Dude would we even be alive for contact lenses vr o.o
@@Sarahm2261 Dude, there are people alive today who remember a world without computers and digital devices............ wake up, lol
@@Nemoticon so the tech will advance that fast in 100 years? That was just the question sorry if I offend you
@@Sarahm2261 Less than... easy.
I'll never forget playing some of the very first VR . I was in London with my father, and the machines were all over Piccadilly. Incredible at the time. I wouldve never imagined what it has turned into..
25:22 that kid in the background takes lounging to a whole other level.
So much nostalgia. So much graphics. "Build us a borg thesp" you had me at that. Then Octav1us popped up looking So beautiful. Epic ...
The movie theater that I worked at in the 90's had this, was amazing to me when I first tried it.
I worked there in 92, worked on Flying Aces and Legend Quest :)
Very well done! That was a PBS quality documentary. This is definitely one of the best retro-gaming channels on TH-cam.
It was also nice to see Octav1ous make a cameo! You guys are such perfect couple. Was that your little'n watching you play the old VR game? That's really sweet. I wish you folks all the best. And keep up the great work, both of you!👍👍
This was an amazing episode. This took me back to the early 90's when VR was seen a lot on TV. Programs that you featured in this video used either used VR or promoted it in some. Shows like Gamesmaster, Knightmare, Bad Influence and such.
I remember I was only about 6 maybe 7 when I first seen VR and I had no clue what the term VR or even Virtual Reality stood for or meant. All I could remember was seeing those Virtuality headsets on Gamesmaster and thinking about how cool they looked. But as fast as they seemed to be gaining attention they were dead and seemed to fade into obscurity.
This was a great trip down memory lane for me thanks for this amazing look at history.
I still think back fondly onto the time I spent using a demonstration VR headset at COMDEX Atlanta, Georgia. I stood in line for hours to play on it. Then stuck around for hours more to enjoy other people trying to top my best time and score. Nobody had for at least that day. I had wanted to try the VR consoles at places like Dave & Busters but their cost for so little game time was always too steep for me. And so it remains to this day. A richer man's hobby.
Back in 1992, I was a member of a VR club located in the basement of the Holographic Museum in Copenhagen. They had 4 of the original 1000CS machines. Members got a "digital key" reminiscent of a USB stick which you paid to get loaded up with play time. Each machine had an external port for the key and tracked and deducted time from it as you played.
I remember (or thought I did) playing 3 games there: Dactyl Nightmare, Legend Quest, and a third one which I could have sworn was _called_ Dactyl Nightmare 2, but looking at the footage of that game in the video (as well as the information that it was only available for later models) proves me wrong. As it turns out, after researching a bit I concluded that the third game was in fact _also_ Dactyl Nightmare, but in its "Capture The Flag" mode (which the video neglected to mention). In that mode, instead of the grenade launcher pistol, the player can switch between an axe, a shield and a crossbow.
My most vivid memory of Legend Quest was the sheer awesomeness of fighting skeletons with a sword in VR.
Great video ! About the idea of mixing a real character in a 3D environment, I've done something similar for an industrial client that wanted their employees to train on physical model, but immersed in a 3D reconstruction of their real-life working environment. This was needed because their employees had very short time to do their work and they had to train just in time before doing it for real. I used a HTC Vive VR headset and mounted on it a webcam and use a green background to manage the superimposition of the model and the real hands of the employee inside the 3D virtual world. I also added some sounds recorded in their real workplace and added the possibility for an external person to talk directly in the audio helmet to the employee. That was a very interesting project. We called this concept Augmented Virtuality.
Amazing
They had two of these at Tower Park in Bournemouth in 91/92. They were in the bowling alley though not the underfloor arcade.
I remember it being about £2 and bloody jerky. A biplane game I think...
Keep up the good work fella!
Brings back memories of Lister earing out the groinal attachment on Red Dwarf
The one made for NASA was the one I saw as a teenager. It fired my imagination like little else. I even tried making my own device from bits and parts! Actually got a crude thing working before I reached the limits of what a 14 year old could make on their own.
Today I have an Oculus Rift, Gear VR, and have made my own contraptions still trying to have the best VR experience.
i watched this episode on my rift as a mark of vr respect. I also typed this comment on a vr keyboard 8)
Epic.
>typing on a vr keyboard.....
that must have been a pain in the ass to do...
@@second2050 Actually it was a piece of cake. Oculus have done good work on the virtual keyboard. It's basically like typing with two fingers. Although I do wonder what typing with the knuckles controller from the index is like 8)
@@th3d3wd3r oculus keyboard is pretty good i found it natural tge first time i used it even beatsabres keyboard is nice to use.
And i’m having a virtual shit... isn’t technology great?
Whoa this episode from the Nostalgia Nerd was virtually amazing
But how close is it to *virtuality?* 😜
I got to play Virtuality's Terradactyl FPS shooter back in 1993. I was set up at the local college student union with two player stations. Being an Amiga owner, I heard about these systems in Amiga magazines and was especially interested to play it.
When my turn came up, the headset was heavy and cumbersome, but it didn't matter. After I spotted the fellow player, I snuck up behind him and waited. He was on a platform which I followed him on to, and he was yelling out to me that he can't see me anywhere.
Everyone was watching the gameplay on monitors and they were screaming with laughter as my opponent slowly turned to my gun waiting for his face to show.
It was the best, and I was so juiced about the future and getting VR games at home. It's crazy that it took as long as it did, but I still have yet to buy a headset. I've only done the crappy VRidge/RiftCat phone thingy, but don't have the proper hand tools.
I'd love a Steam Index, but that is pricey and requires a better GPU (which is impossible to buy), and wanted an Oculus before Facebook made it spyware. Just waiting on the sweet mid-tier headset to finally jump back in decades later!
I really appreciate all of the effort you put into this video. Thank you for making it! 😍
After trying one of these in the early 90's i looked forward to what it would become, didn't realize i would have to wait over quarter of a century to try it again.
I can't wait for Octavius' take on all this. Thanks for the capture of history and to the museum for the preservation.
I was following along with the story until I heard her cackling in the set. Now all I wanna hear is her take :D
at 01:13 I immediately i recognised the official "messiest hairdo on youtube" TM, I knew there's gonna be an Octavius video as well :)
Her take would be something like this;
*touch*
"Mine, all mine now! Yes, you may borrow it but it's definitely all mine."
@@garethfairclough8715 You forgot "Gubbins, gubbins, gubbins. Gubbins gubbins. Gubbins, gubbins and gubbins. Gub-gub-guuubins gubbins gubbins gubbins gubbins gubbins GUBBINS!" At which point she will switch to talking about the glorious INNER gubbins.
I remember my first ‘virtual reality’ experience as a kid, it was this strangle rollercoaster machine. You’d get inside, be strapped in safely, and then they’d close the doors. It was essentially a cart that was bolted to the floor, but would shake you about. It didn’t use VR headsets though, but rather a small television which displayed to the viewer a rollercoaster cart moving through space as the cart shook. And since you had literal rollercoaster bars and were cut off from the outside world, I remember being astounded as a kid- it felt so real to me.
This was at some massive science museum in my state, and I loved going to this museum just for this ‘ride’.
I had a very similar experience; however, it was a flight simulator. The whole thing would lift up, tilt, yaw, pitch, all that. Pretty cool stuff. You could go completely upside down
Such an informative episode! I still own an Amiga 3000 and 4000 that I picked up free in 2001 from a local science museum that previously used them to run some of these early VR systems in the 90s. They had lots of weird capture boards installed with jumper wires going directly to solder points on the motherboards.
After watching this, for some reason, I feel the need to watch the old Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy TV series :)
@DED DOA You got that feeling as well?
Glad I wasn't the only one... :)
Quality video, as always mate. I love the longer docos you produce. They are incredibly easy to watch.
Yeah, I like the way the videos aren't just pieces of stock video with talking over the top, in that rambling "must keep talking or the viewers turn off" style that TH-cam is a bit full of. It's like watching an actual TV program. Very nice :)
23:26 'Internauts.' Boy am I glad that didn't catch on.
Great doc! It's fun to see how far tech has progressed. I feel like we're finally experiencing what the Nintendo Virtual Boy promised me as a child and spectacularly failed to deliver.
Watching this while I wait for PSVR 2 to drop in one week. How far we've come.
Fantastic work, thorough, well researched and entertaining.
More like this please!
I played that first VR shooter on a San Francisco pier back in 1994/5... man good times.
That could only have been the Pier 39 mega arcade... sadly no more.
wow thank you! when I'm telling friends I've tried VR in '95 nobody seems to trust me. I was a teenager and Virtuality opened a club in Florence at that time. What a dive back in time!
I remember those times. The first appearance of possibility to play in VR headset. It was mind-blowing. Then "VR.5" series. What a nice movie. Still watch it sometimes.
This episode has excellent production quality, also very informative. Good work guys.
Nightmare dactyl 2 was the 1st VR experience I had in 1995 at Disney world Epcot center. I was hooked and grew up to design several VR applications.
I was the first to rent out the Virtuality SD1000 anywhere in the world, we started in 1992 and continued until around 2002 with the SU2000.
The CS1000 arcade unit wasn't launched until after the Wembley launch of the SD1000. The original version was built out of plywood until they finished the fibreglass shell.
I used to be a frequent visitor to Leicester and saw many new devices and games in that demo room as well as upstairs as the business grow right up until its sad demise.
Until the recent resurgence of VR I was probably responsible for putting more people in VR than anyone else.
Have to say this is the best history of Virtuality I've seen in a long time, (there are still a few errors) but mostly well done.
PS I still have a SD1000 and a SU2000
I remember playing this at Virginia Beach in 92. I was 10, and was naturally impressed. I was convinced VR was right around the corner. Then the Virtual Boy came out and I felt like, "yeaaaah, we're getting there". Took an additional 20 years or so.
This was a very informative and well researched video. I enjoyed watching it.
I’m going to be super petty here but wasn’t the Power Glove from Mattel, not Nintendo :p
Technically not even Mattel. Someone else did a video on the history of the Power Glove and it was infact from an early VR data glove company. VR hadn't really started yet so they needed a way to sell their product so they made a cheaper and simplified VR glove for the NES. The PROBLEM was more that you're trying to shoehorn VR glove compatibility onto games that were never built for it. I'd love to know how well Glove Ball worked as I think it was the only game truly MADE for the Power Glove.
Regardless, I do remember a lot of people hacking Power Gloves and using them as cheap VR input devices back in the early 90s. That was a thing. I remember I had a book called "Virtual Reality Madness and More" which came with two CD ROMs full of VR crap and many of the programs on there supported the Power Glove.
Pew pew. I digitized you both with my Nintendo zapper I stole from my brother's duck hunt game. Shiny metal armor on handsome guys forever. Go Captain Power!
In fairness this was only released as a Nintendo only compatible device... and it looked comically bad even back then!
Love your channel!
You really make content that brings back nostalgia from my childhood..the golden days of the 90s!
I saw the yellow one in London as a kid. Can’t wait for PSVR2 next week!!!
Tried it at CES London in early 90’s, was a memorable experience shooting an enemy on a bridge above me. Looking up 🤪
I remember my first and last experience with Virtuality. They'd setup a special demonstration at the mall. After waiting an hour in line it was finally my turn and after paying 5 dollars, they stuck the helmet on my head and without any instruction stuck my into a sit down flight sim that reminded me of Red Barron on PC. Disoriented and barely knowing what the game was, I died within seconds and was pulled from the machine and the helmet taken off and nudged on my way. To say the least, I wasn't impressed. I didn't see the machines since until images started showing up online.
You didn't miss much, I played one of these at Epcot, and instead of some overly complicated game I didn't understand, I played some kind of egg hunting thing. Except I spent the entire time I was in there trying to work out how to move and look around. The low refresh rate, high latency, and inability to see the controller at all made it very difficult to do much of anything and I mostly remember just being disappointed. Wolfenstein 3D on the home PC was more immersive, really.
That's pretty much identical to my experience with Virtuality, plus I remember the Red Baron type game being very laggy and making me feel nauseous :) 1993 in London.
exactly the same experience for me in 95 or so in a small town in Argentina. except it wasn't crowded but I was scammed $5 as well for a few seconds of flight sim.
I remember having a go on the Virtuality unit at Alton Towers in 1994, I remember being totally amazed. I never understood why nothing seemed to publicly happen with it for 20+ years!
It's stunning the solutions they came up with for what are still the pain points for VR. Certainly no lack of ambition. And what would the world be without the Lawnmower Man, the Citizen Kane of my youth
Only got to play the 1v1 shooter game (with the pterodacty)in Virtuality once at a mall in the mid 90's. It was pretty cool, but I was only a kid and the headset was MASSIVE.
The FOV was something like looking though a long rectangle cardboard tube. I didn't think VR would ever be more than an arcade experience after that and now I have the Valve Index!
Pretty sure we're at the rise of the home VR at this point in time. The Quest 2 flew off shelves during lockdown. VR had to skip a decade and a half due to costs and home consoles, but now it's back with a vengeance! What a time to be alive
My first thought exactly. Early VR from the 90’s is what I imagine from VR.
I was lucky enough to spend a few months working at Virtuality as an intern in their engineering and design department. The Visette 2 was well and truly ahead of it's time. It was incredibly durable and most of the problems that occurred in the field were easily fixed with minor retrofits.
The 2000 system proofed that good game play could easily make up for basic graphics. The Buggy Ball game was hugely entertaining when you played it as a group.
What really killed VR at the time was the high price of the systems compared with the emergence of fast 3D graphics in home video games. I remember at the time there was talk that Sega Rally was their biggest competition in the arcade. It was slightly cheaper to purchase but could make significantly more money for the operator without the need of a person supervising the machine.
Great seeing a well produced video looking back at what was a cutting edge startup before startups were a thing.
When I was a kid they had this VR game at the arcade. It was a mech suite game, you stood on a platform and the helmet came down. The whole machine was massive.
As a Kid i sat in a "Venturer S2" in Sinsheim , Germany at around 1996 or 1997 :) That was my first Virtual Reality Experience. Weird thing is that there is not a lot of Information on those Machines at all..
Watching the attendant lock people into a MASSIVE headset is hilarious when I think about the fact that I have a quest in my laptop bag.
In another 10 years we'll find the bulk of our current headsets hilarious once again.
I love VR, thanks for showing some of the really old systems, I remember seeing some on TV as a kid but didn't remember the show names. Also, "Tostesterone"? XD 26:44
This was really cool. I remember actually using these in a fair back in the day. It was my first experience with VR and it blew my young mind.
I saw one of these in an arcade when I was on holiday once, but they wanted a fiver for it as I recall, and I only had a bag full of 10p coins to play the machines, not a fiver's worth. Never saw one in the flesh again.
Looking forward to watching this... I remember this company seemed so exciting at the time..
I also remember trying it at the Trocadero in London... and it was a bit of a let down...
But is was the only real consumer vr at the time..
Gonna watch now,
Nick
I felt like a bit of a numpti trying to play Dactyl Nightmare in front of hundreds.
Nearly got to meet Julian Rignall though! He looked awkward and had a gathering of children around him. Was it about 1994?
Edit: I didn't live in London at the time, Tocadero was the arcade? The time I tried it was at a trade convention, (like a CES) me and a friend went with our dads as they got invites, there were loads of kids and teenagers there though... and Rignall.
Ahhh, Trocadero. What a place, what a time. I agree, I was more disappointed in the 90s than I am today.
@@Nostalgianerd My disappointment trying Virtuality was partially based on the fact someone had expelled their rectal miasma into the space prior.
@@eustacequinlank7418 Someone farted so hard, in an open air environment, that it didn't clear out in time for your turn? That's hardcore...
@@TheBrokenLife Some people just part a cheek slightly and the room suffers.
Really though, great video! VR is intrinsic to my life these days and this video was a nostalgia trip.
An oh-so-excellent documentary, thank you! Here's another bit of interesting and perhaps forgotten history: I attended what I believe was the first "open to the public" VR/AR Conference in San Jose, California, in 1990 or '91. Back then "AR" often meant "Artificial Reality," but also "Augmented Reality," although depending on who you talked to, both definitions were in play. At the conference I also had the extreme pleasure and honor of meeting Dr. Jaron Lanier, who as your excellent documentary pointed out, coined the term "VR," along with many other concepts, words and terms that are now part of our lexicon. He gave me a private showing in his hotel suite of a wireframe VR system with haptic feedback running on an economic (for back then) network of Macs that was nothing short of incredible. The actual point of this note is that Dr. Lanier called his headset a "Data Phone" and the tactile feedback glove he'd invented and was experimenting with a "Data Glove." It's too bad these terms didn't stick, because I still find them quite imaginative and kind of fun.