System afterlife

[Harrison]

I've never seen a real virtual boy, but have always wanted to get the chance to play one. It was a great idea to use the stereoscopic 3D effect for a gaming system, but it was definitely way ahead of its time with this type of 3D being B/W (well Red and White in the virtual boys case) and if Nintendo had trouble getting third party developers to make games for their normal consoles imagine the trouble they must of had getting them to for this.

[J T]

Wasn't the Virtual Boy also terribly migraine-inducing?

The Atari Lynx wasn't massively popular was it? I had a go on one once, it was OK but the game (Todd in Slime World) was pretty shitty IIRC.

[Harrison]

It can't be good having intense LED generated stereoscopic graphics projected directly into your eyes, as it's not just the images your brain has to interpret, but also the combining of the two images into 3D. Today's method of actually creating a 3D world inside a motion tracking helmet is a much better solution.

I nearly bought an Atari Lynx once. I had been tempted by the system for some time, Technically superior to the B/W gameboy by a long way, and with better specs than the Sega Gamegear. I even had the cash in my pocket when I went into the video game store to buy one, but they were out of stock. I'm so glad I never got one now as it would have been a big mistake. Hardly any games released for the system and it drained AA batteries very quickly.

Shame really as the system was technically ahead of any other hand-held at the time. It just wasn't designed too well. It was too chunky and heavy and had the battery issues.. It did have a great colour display for the time though.

Atari kept making mistakes like that throughout their console making years. Look at the Jaguar. Again a great technical idea, but just not right for the market at the time. And all their 8-bit home computers just confused me. I wasn't sure what was what with that lot. At least with the Atari ST it was a bit easier to work out, although even that evolved quite a lot when you compare the very first ST released with the later STE. The first one didn't even come with a built in floppy disk drive for example, then one a single sided drive, then double sided, then an enhanced less compatible system. So in the ST was a bit of a mess too in a way with most developers just sticking with the STFM spec to guarantee maximum compatibility.

[Demon Cleaner]

Wasn't the Virtual Boy also terribly migraine-inducing?

I don't know, but I have an Olympus EyeTrek headset, and you feel quite dizzy in the beginning when watching a movie for 20 minutes.

[Harrison]

Was that EyeTrek expensive? And what is the image quality like?

Does it actually look like you are watching something displayed in front of you? or more like you are actually watching something projected directly into your eyes?

I did get to try out a more recent similar product not so long ago and it actually looked like you were watching a large TV screen about 10 feet away, plus the glasses were clear so you could still see everything else going on around you and watch the image at the same time. I forget the name of it but is was very clear and worked well. Way too expensive though.

[J T]

Wasn't the Virtual Boy also terribly migraine-inducing?

I don't know, but I have an Olympus EyeTrek headset, and you feel quite dizzy in the beginning when watching a movie for 20 minutes.

I remember reading about those! What are they like (apart from the initial giddiness)?

equivalent to a 62-inch wide-screen TV when viewed at a distance of 6 1/2 feet

That's about as close as I can sit to my 37 inch (for playing wii), really wouldn't want to go much closer, let alone with a bigger screen!

priced at $899

Please tell me you got them 2nd hand or mega-cut price....

[Demon Cleaner]

Does it actually look like you are watching something displayed in front of you? or more like you are actually watching something projected directly into your eyes?

That's difficult to say, as your eyes have to acclimate, the first time it's quite exceptional, it seems that you are looking at a very big screen or a canvas. But after some time, your eyes will hurt, as you don't have the habit. And I would also say that watching it for more than 2 hours is impossible. It's more like a toy for us big kiddies, that was also the reason I bought it

I got mine for 300$ at eBay, did not buy it new of course. My model was priced at 2000$ when it came out, there are different models existing of the EyeTrek.

[Harrison]

$300 is still quite expensive. Especially for something you probably hardly use. Although for collecting it's quite a cool piece of hardware.