Conina said:
Even without taking specs into account like resolution per eye, field of view, processing power, number of colors, Hertz, lag... Sega VR was just a concept that didn't make it to the market. We don't even know if the consumer version had the key features of a VR headset.
So let's go from this vaporware to the Virtual Boy: it wasn't a VR headset. It was missing a lot of key features of a VR headset:
It may look similar to a head-mounted display, but it is a stationary device with tabletop form factor. Instead of giving you some additional freedom to move your head around (like any HMD), you are even more constrained than looking on a TV or handheld screen. You have to hold your head absolutely still while looking through the goggles… not very comfortable.
You use it like a stationary tourism binocular:
There is no head-tracking at all. While any other VR system gives you 3DoF (3 degrees of freedom) or 6DoF (6 degrees of freedom) when you turn your head, the Virtual Boy only supports a fixed camera position in games (0DoF?).
You can’t even change the perspective with the controller, because the games weren’t using a 3D engine which allowed that. Without z-buffering, the 3D effect were some simple parallax tricks of 2D images… similar to the NES-classics on 3DS instead of the “real” 3DS games with a 3D-engine and proper management of image depth coordinates for a better stereoscopic effect.
It doesn’t try to put the player/user into a virtual world/scenario, you are only the observer from outside watching and controlling the protagonist.
Saying that the Virtual Boy is similar to a modern VR headset (or even the Forte VFX1 of the ‘90s) despite lacking a lot of features which are essential for a VR experience (and we are not talking about resolution) is like saying that PDAs (f.e. Apple Newton) were already smartphones because they had many of the smartphone features (while ignoring the lack of other essential features). |
Why are you acting like I've never used a Virtual Boy? I Know what it is. I know what it does.
Where did I say it was similar to a modern VR headset? I never. Where did I say it never lacked a lot of features modern headsets have? I never.
All I said was that it was a poor VR headset. And it was, because it was lacking a lot of features that it would need to make it a decent VR experience. That doesn't mean it wasn't VR.
As for smartphones:
"In March 1996, Hewlett-Packard released the OmniGo 700LX, a modified HP 200LX palmtop PC with a Nokia 2110 mobile phone piggybacked onto it and ROM-based software to support it. It had a 640×200 resolution CGA compatible four-shade gray-scale LCD screen and could be used to place and receive calls, and to create and receive text messages, emails and faxes. It was also 100% DOS 5.0 compatible, allowing it to run thousands of existing software titles, including early versions of Windows."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone
Sounds to me like taking a PDA and mashing a Nokia phone on the back of it does actually make a smartphone. Sure the Omnigo doesn't have much in common with the first iPhone, but they're both still considered smartphones. Imagine that.
