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Talk:Virtuality (product)

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More, More, More

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Virtuality was really innovative, I remember how amazing this 3D gaming system was at a time when I hadn't yet heard of the internet. It was a whiff of the future. The iconic headgear with the emblazoned "Virtuality" logo was shown in magazines everywhere and became synonymous for the shape of computers to come (later replaced by the more salacious "Cybersex Suit").

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this article so far, and personally I'd like to see it much expanded and especially illustrated. Maikel (talk) 08:18, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Whence could we get an image? Maikel (talk) 09:11, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly how does the motion tracking work? Did the Visette and the Space Joystick really transmit information to the waist-height sensors?
In the 2000 series products, tracking was done with a commercial product, the Polhemus Insidetrack. A three axis transmitter was hidden in the waist-high ring (there were no sensors in the ring, at least not in the 2000). Position sensors were in the headband of the Visette (as they called it) and in the Space Joystick. The tracking system was run by a single full-length ISA card in the computer (one for each player, actually). EasilyAmused (talk) 06:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
What is the "corral platform" thingie called? Maikel (talk) 10:30, 1 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It was called simply the "Console". The waist-high ring (one half hinged for easy access) was called the Ring. Not terribly creative names. EasilyAmused (talk) 06:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Brain dump here... do with it what you wish... the games predated 3D accelerated video cards. Frame rate varied wildly depending on scene complexity. These were the brute force days of doing the 3D math in software without hardware acceleration. Very ambitious engineering. Each player's video was produced by a board (possibly two) with 2 Motorola 88110 RISC processors sharing 8MB of operating RAM and a single 4MB video RAM buffer. The LCD monitors in the Visette accepted PAL video (composite). The hardware was capable of "dual mono" video or 3D stereo. In elder days I worked on these machines for about a year. They were judged too expensive to maintain and scrapped. EasilyAmused (talk) 06:05, 17 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not experienced in editing, but thought it significant enough to suggest that a cultural reference be made to the system being displayed and used in the 1995 movie "Hackers", specifically around the 0:39:43 time mark. It's currently "free to watch" on YouTube at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5T_CqqjOPDc — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.83.0.96 (talk) 03:41, 13 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Atari

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I'm surprised to see no mention of Atari in this article. Their partnership with Virtuality to design the very nearly released VR HMD for the Jaguar console is well known. Plenty of citable material out there for the intrepid Wikipedian. Xot (talk) 05:19, 15 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Another Game

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There was also a World War I flight simulator, I remember playing it at an arcade on Leicester Square, London where they had a whole bunch of machines including Total Destruction, Exorex, the Harrier simulator and the standy-uppy ones. A group of us used to go there from work. Great days. I thought it was really sad that these systems didn't last. Back then, it was revolutionary- and enormous fun. I'm amazed how long ago it was, and it's truly amazing how much technology has improved. Any sort of 3D was teh awesome in those primitive horse and buggy times of nearly twenty years ago...82.71.30.178 (talk) 19:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress

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There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:First-person (gaming) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 19:01, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]