It was 1993, late .. I was in the Embarcadero, something like the 36th floor, to play some Spectre VR at Velocity/Peninsula, where the game was made. My pal who worked there had been working late, so we blew some millions of tank pixels way. It was bliss. Doom had hit too, so we spent a few hours at that, and then back to Spectre VR again. Testing his networking code. By the time we walked out satisfied it was working, it was Saturday morning, and the sun was up in San Francisco. As we left his office, he gave me "Snow Crash" to take with me, for it was company reading and he'd read it already. It was motivating.
On the ground level of Embarcadero, as we left to trudge into our bunks across the bay, there was one of the first headset-VR shop/setups, running .. I think .. 'Dino'. It made me puke if I played for a few minutes, but it was neat that 'VR', back then, 'was coming .. soon'.
A few years later, there were the flight-sim centers around the SGI neighborhood. HUD's of pixels, or something.
Anyway, I still like to read Snow Crash every few years or so. Next month I'll probably do a workshop with some Dutch friends in Den Haag, with their new Occulus Rift headsets.. so to this old grizzly, it seems people want VR, even still. Gotta solve the puke factor, at least in my case, first though ..
I've read Snow Crash yearly since I discovered the book some 14 years ago. I guess that's how I deal with the fact that Stephenson often doesn't know how to end a novel. I ached for a VR world like the Metaverse for a long time back then, but of course everything has always fallen well short of the mark. Maybe World of Warcraft came closest for me, to the degree I became immersed in Azeroth, but it was still obviously not the dream.
thanks for the little war story! snow crash inspired me to build UT maps with wicked3d stereoscopic driver and my 20 inch crt. It had a better fov then my z800 hmd years later. Appearently the latest Oculus Rift has a very low puke factor.
If the workshop in the Hague is open I might take a look.
maybe VR is real this time, but I've seen nothing but hype.
though Carmack promotes it, his in-depth technical reports convinced me we're a tremendously long way off. it might be OK for particular orientations and movement directions.
Agreed. Combine that with the Oculus DK2 getting almost universal acclaim from users, with a very small subset of software thus far that supports the new SDK and positional tracking, and this seems like it'll be a very big deal.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 33.9 ms ] threadgreat sponsorship.
On the ground level of Embarcadero, as we left to trudge into our bunks across the bay, there was one of the first headset-VR shop/setups, running .. I think .. 'Dino'. It made me puke if I played for a few minutes, but it was neat that 'VR', back then, 'was coming .. soon'.
A few years later, there were the flight-sim centers around the SGI neighborhood. HUD's of pixels, or something.
Anyway, I still like to read Snow Crash every few years or so. Next month I'll probably do a workshop with some Dutch friends in Den Haag, with their new Occulus Rift headsets.. so to this old grizzly, it seems people want VR, even still. Gotta solve the puke factor, at least in my case, first though ..
Drop me a line, let's bullshit about VR.
http://assayviaessay.blogspot.com/2014/03/virtual-spaces-rea...
though Carmack promotes it, his in-depth technical reports convinced me we're a tremendously long way off. it might be OK for particular orientations and movement directions.