Eight Attempts To Take Gaming Into the Third Dimension

[John Markley]

Eight Attempts To Take Gaming Into the Third Dimension

The Oculus Rift may have caused a resurgence in the popularity of 3D gaming, but the industry has been attempting to bring the technology to gamers for decades...

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[Lightknight]

The game "Heart of Darkness" also featured Anaglyph 3D Glasses after the credits. Loved that game...

<youtube=Uz_33J_SUcY>

Cut to 1:13:13 to see the part I remember.

EDIT: ugh, not in English.

 

[vallorn]

Terrible vistas open before you, wrought in agonizing lines of crimson light blazing against utter sepulchral darkness. They sear your eyes like a thousand red-hot brands, their inhuman geometric precision a mocking counterpoint to your own bewilderment. You look to your left, then to your right, frantically seeking some refuge, but in vain. Beyond this hellish incarnadine abyss there is nothing, nothing except the burning pain in your eyes and a growing cramp in your neck and the terrible awareness that somehow you chose this.

That's really a lovely piece of writing for what is still one of the worst video game systems ever devised by mo... no I don't think mortal minds came up with it. Satan himself planted the terrible seed of the Virtual Boy inside the mind of an executive one day as he drifted through a board meeting.

It is amusing that modern 3d technology that we see in cinema's is pretty much just an updated version of the old Anaglyph technology. Only now we use polarized filters instead of wavelength filters on the glasses and they aren't made of cardboard.

 

[John Markley]

Terrible vistas open before you, wrought in agonizing lines of crimson light blazing against utter sepulchral darkness. They sear your eyes like a thousand red-hot brands, their inhuman geometric precision a mocking counterpoint to your own bewilderment. You look to your left, then to your right, frantically seeking some refuge, but in vain. Beyond this hellish incarnadine abyss there is nothing, nothing except the burning pain in your eyes and a growing cramp in your neck and the terrible awareness that somehow you chose this.

That's really a lovely piece of writing for what is still one of the worst video game systems ever devised by mo... no I don't think mortal minds came up with it. Satan himself planted the terrible seed of the Virtual Boy inside the mind of an executive one day as he drifted through a board meeting.

It is amusing that modern 3d technology that we see in cinema's is pretty much just an updated version of the old Anaglyph technology. Only now we use polarized filters instead of wavelength filters on the glasses and they aren't made of cardboard.

You're very kind. Whenever I start writing about Virtual Boy, I invariably descend into purple prose Lovecraft pastiche. Though in this case I think I may have crossed the line from purple prose into ultraviolet.

In fairness to Gunpei Yokoi, he himself wasn't satisfied with it- he didn't think it was fit for release yet, but his bosses at Nintendo were in a hurry to shift development resources to the N64 and overruled him. How much he might have been able to improve on it, I don't know- the core problems with the device seem intractable.

 

[vallorn]

Terrible vistas open before you, wrought in agonizing lines of crimson light blazing against utter sepulchral darkness. They sear your eyes like a thousand red-hot brands, their inhuman geometric precision a mocking counterpoint to your own bewilderment. You look to your left, then to your right, frantically seeking some refuge, but in vain. Beyond this hellish incarnadine abyss there is nothing, nothing except the burning pain in your eyes and a growing cramp in your neck and the terrible awareness that somehow you chose this.

That's really a lovely piece of writing for what is still one of the worst video game systems ever devised by mo... no I don't think mortal minds came up with it. Satan himself planted the terrible seed of the Virtual Boy inside the mind of an executive one day as he drifted through a board meeting.

It is amusing that modern 3d technology that we see in cinema's is pretty much just an updated version of the old Anaglyph technology. Only now we use polarized filters instead of wavelength filters on the glasses and they aren't made of cardboard.

You're very kind. Whenever I start writing about Virtual Boy, I invariably descend into purple prose Lovecraft pastiche. Though in this case I think I may have crossed the line from purple prose into ultraviolet.

In fairness to Gunpei Yokoi, he himself wasn't satisfied with it- he didn't think it was fit for release yet, but his bosses at Nintendo were in a hurry to shift development resources to the N64 and overruled him. How much he might have been able to improve on it, I don't know- the core problems with the device seem intractable.

I think the very concept of it is flawed, the sheer weight of the unit for example is so great that I don't think any real improvement with their technology would have made it bearable. As well as that the cost saving measures of the red lights would have meant that it induced eye strain no matter what.

When you have a device that has to warn you not to use it every 15-30 mins I don't think that it's really salvageable...

 

[cathou]

ok, i'll think it's time for me to go out of the closet. i admit it now, after years of denial : i fucking loved the virtual boy !.

Gasp ! shock ! horror !

yes i i've almost buy one in 1995. i've rented it several time at my local video rental store, and i played at least 30 to 40 hour with it. but back then i was 16 and i was trying to gather enough cash to quit the family house, so i decided that i didnt had the cash to buy it.

i've played mostly with mario tenis, teleroboxer and red alarm.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Some of the problems the virtual boy seems to induce seem a common theme for VR systems.

Then again, leaving aside the eye-burning red on black, and incredibly heavy device, the Virtual boy reads like the very definition of 'worst case scenario' for the kind of design decisions that lead to nausea in VR.

I notice no mention of VR in this article, even indirectly.
Which actually makes sense, because, believe it or not, the primary features that make VR worth anything are the ability to 'close the loop' as it's usually called.

That is, if implemented well, it can do a decent job of tricking your brain into thinking that what the VR system puts out is what's there, and not just an image on a screen.

3D has nothing to do with this. It just happens to be something that can be implemented as a trivial extra in VR headsets anyway.
Yes, 3D is an afterthought even in VR. XD

There's certainly some interesting devices in this list.
I had anaglyph glasses for a while. (and variant designs with yellow-blue lenses that handled colour somewhat better than the red-blue kind). I even had a driver for PC that let you use them with EVERY game.
Though it was interesting, the things I tried it with kinda suffered for it.
(losing colour perception can be surprisingly problematic in games.)
I even tried it with Star Trek Online for a bit.
(sadly, the driver I used for this is no longer actively developed, and doesn't really work properly anymore).

I remember the... Sega Holographic things too.
They look interesting, but it definitely is just a novelty really.

And the vectrex... Ah, the vectrex.
Seems like an interesting thing technologically, but I can see why it didn't really catch on.
Didn't know it had an even more awkward 3d system to go with it's awkward screen though. XD

 

[flying_whimsy]

I've always been a fan of sega's hardware mainly because we had the 3D glasses for the master system when I was little. It took nearly thirty years for the rest of the entertainment industry to catch up. Too bad it was sega, and they never quite got the idea that good software is what sells hardware.

As for the rest, I'd never actually heard of most of those things. I think I remember playing the sega hologram cabinet once a long time ago. I always did like the virtual boy, but then again my friends had them and it was more of a special headache-inducing occasion to play one.

Oh wario: jumping on the hat craze before TF2 was a thing.