Virtually perfect: The past, present, and future of VR

Virtually perfect: The past, present, and future of VR
Virtual reality is currently the hot new thing in the world of gaming.

Virtual reality is currently the hot new thing in the world of gaming. Facebook’s Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus headsets consistently make headlines, and it’s well-known that Valve is actively developing its own VR implementation. If these technology giants actually execute on the promise of “VR that doesn’t suck,” virtual reality has the potential to invigorate the industry like nothing else before. However, the Rift and Morpheus have decades of VR failure to fight against. Even if the finished products are solid, can they convince the average consumer that virtual reality is worth the investment?

A truly compelling VR solutionhas been a long time coming, and we’ve seen countless attempts in the past. The first real efforts to produce a virtual reality were made in the middle of the 20th century, and there have been far too many prototypes and failed products to cover in a single article. Instead, I’ll be focusing on the more recent history of virtual reality, and how it transitioned from a crazy sci-fi concept to a tangible household item that can take us anywhere we want to go.

Nintendo Virtual Boy

When I first saw the Oculus Rift Kickstarter project in August of 2012, I immediately thought back to the mid-90s when Nintendo released the Virtual Boy. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi (creator of the Game Boy), this red monstrosity wasn’t quite a home console, but it wasn’t portable either. This oddball device only displayed monochromatic red images, supported a mere 14 titles in North America, and was abandoned less than a year after its initial launch.

The high asking price and strange hardware configuration surely contributed to the Virtual Boy’s failure, but ultimately it came down to the disappointing tech. Sure, it could produce 3D images, but the result looked markedly worse than existing SNES titles. The Virtual Boy also needed to be used sitting awkwardly still at a table, so extended play was completely impractical. No head-tracking here! The mass-production of the Virtual Boy was certainly a large step forward in consumer VR, but the lackluster implementation left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, and led to the ousting of Yokoi from Nintendo.

Image credit: Trypode

Head-mounted displays of the ’90s and ’00s

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a number of different head-mounted displays (HMDs) were released to little fanfare by consumers. I-O Display Systems had its obnoxiously-named “i-Glasses,” VictorMaxx had a number of HMDs with names like “Stuntmaster” and “CyberMaxx,” and Forte Technologies had its “VFX” line. By and large, these HMDs were complete failures. The underlying tech just wasn’t good enough yet, and the large price tags prevented even the slightest bit of traction from forming.

Among these headsets, the resolution and overall performance were usually underwhelming, but the worst part was how half-hearted so many implementations were. Some models didn’t feature motion tracking, and others lacked a stereoscopic 3D display. Given the technological restraints of the era, it’s easy to see why these VR headsets weren’t quite right. Even so, these companies were still selling helmets for hundreds of dollars a pop, so let’s not let them off the hook completely. Anyone snookered into buying one of these devices was most certainly disappointed in the modest hardware and severe lack of content.

Next page: TrackIR and motion controls

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