| Author | Message | ||
     Tony Asch (Tone) Junior Member Username: Tone Post Number: 24 Registered: 8-2006 Rating: N/A |
V-Rtifacts Shop Virtual Research Helmets Liquid Image Silver Screens Virtuality Tech Manuals Free Downloads Thanks! | ||
| Fronzel Neekburm (Fronzel) Member Username: Fronzel Post Number: 42 Registered: 7-2009 Rating: N/A |
Don't like the shop site (Didn't work in IE6 on work and its a bit stupid you need to register to get the free downloads). Would love to have an Virtual Research V6, but for 950 bucks its a bit out of my price range (I must admit i rather save the dough for an 800x600 emagin or iglasses). The MRG 2.2 is a cool collectors piece though, i think the design is much "cyber punk" alike, but the lack of stereo support scares me off a bit i must admit. How much is actually shipping to Europe? Whats really cool about the site is the blog, a bit chaotic but definitely excellent info in here - finally a site that does not do the 4957549th "Cybermaxx is crap" review. Was also surprised to see the trocadero video i uploaded on youtube there - i already thought all viewers just "accidentially" clicked it... Very nice to read all this. For a second gave me the impression I'm not the only one who has an SU-3000 in his living room (although I probably AM the only one)... Keep up the good work here. VR forever! | ||
| Tony Asch (Tone) Junior Member Username: Tone Post Number: 25 Registered: 8-2006 Rating: N/A |
Stefan, Indeed the fun part is in the posts, and thanks for the Trocadero video. Send in more artifacts, please! I was thinking of doing an "artifact" post on IE6. You beat me to it. But seriously, I'd rather have all the nice AJAX and CSS based stuff than legacy browser support. There's a mobile version of the store for the Win-ME crowd  I appreciate everyone who is willing to say hello by registering before grabbing a free download. I'd like to discourage hit-and-run visitors. The V6 is a completely different beast that emagin or iglasses. It uses the same Epson LCDs that the original Visette Pro used, but instead of the Visette's cheap plastic lenses, V6 uses very nice 3 element aspheric glass optics. Much less distortion and chromatic aberration. The 30mm exit pupil, wide field of view, and precise IPD adjustment on the V6 make it attractive. It's quite a unique artifact from a bygone era. Don't have an SU3000, but had a Cybertron in the garage for a long while, but my kids grew up, and I became more prone to seasickness. The MRG2.2 demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of very wide field of view. On the plus side, it's quite immersive, but on the negative side, the resolution is quite soft. The V-Rtifacts MRG2.2 offering has depixelization filters as do some of the VR-4s, so at least you don't see the transistor structure on the LCDs. In any event, you sound like you've got some stories to tell. Send V-Rtifacts something interesting! Later, Tone | ||
| Fronzel Neekburm (Fronzel) Member Username: Fronzel Post Number: 43 Registered: 7-2009 Rating: N/A |
Hey Tone, Well yeah stupid huge companies never updating their browsers. But oh well i remember when this company updated from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows XP. So i am used to worse software. Well my own site is a pure freebies grabbag i fear, no funny stories, just pure binaries. The magic of plenty. Shame i never had time but to dump loads of files via filezilla. I alsways wanted to make better and more info pages about the vintage systems. About the best optics i have ever experienced are the ones in my SU-3000. I was lucky enough to get one of the later models with the Visette 2. My Optics-1 Inc. PT-01 also has surprisingly well made optics. I am a big fan of the vintage systems, but while i would probably really USE the V6, i think I'd have the V4 or MRG 2.2 rather for collection, which is actually a bit sad. Unfortunately i never made much of the NTSC headsets, although i am aware there are VGA to NTSC converters i just tend to not use them on the PC as it's a bit impractical imho. What i caught myself using rather often is the 1995 i-glasses which have the usual crap resolution, but they are lightweight, view-through, let my normal screen run and have headtracking. The 640x480 res max is a bit bad in windows XP, but i made a little Resolution switcher, so i can quickly grab my iglasses and switch to a 3D movie or a round of Avatar. Avatar the game is my new love, finally a new game that support my 15 years old iglasses, VFX-3D and cybermaxx in field sequential mode. Surprisingly the game really doesn't look as bad as one would guess for such a low resolution. Only the fine crosshair can sometimes be hard to see. The game really made me grab all my old VR headsets and play around. Actually its best in the VFX-3D in normal conditions, followed by the iglasses in total darkness (The see-through kills a bit imemrsion). I was originally working on some AR System for gunsights that counted the number of targets and displayed information about targets and distance in the display (Trivision headset with stereo cams and displays), but in the end the software was never perfect, it would count trees wheeping in the wind as targets , see thousands of targets during rushed movement and so on. Well i somehow lost the only serious application but kept the love for the headsets. OK the love has probably been there since around Dactyl Nightmare. I still today question the sanity of anyone who didn't instantly love it. The first Virtuality machines were imho what really formed the whole Virtual Reality era. Before them it was some scientific or esotheric crap in some fairytale far away from us. Yeah i was excited about the 3D construction kit on Amiga as well, but this was 3D computer graphics not Virtual reality, When i first put the helmet on my head and played Dactyl Nightmare was when the VR era started for me and no second earlier, everything before was simply dreaming. Tell me about Seasickness! I played Virtuality Flaying Aces on a 1000 series sitdown in around 92 or 92 on a ferry from Calais to Dover at rough sea. ANd i actually vomited when i played Segas R360 in Ibiza with misconfigured controls that made me ride "head over heals" (literally) the whole ride. But to come back to the heart of VR - it has imho all started and ended in arcades. The arcade machine were when most people got in Contact with VR, not the VFX-1 or Cybermaxx (Which were simply too expensive when they came out, both originally were over a month wages for me). And the arcades were where it ended. The SU-3000 was the last arcade machine created by Virtuality and imho is the masterpiece although Zero Hour is the only real "game" for it, the clay shooting and shooting gallery games feel more like "early tech demos", but Zero hour was "made for that system and the system was made for it". There were many home user systems available, obscure and rare arcade games, vaporware like the Atari Jaguar VR helmet or economical disasters like Nintendos Virtual Boy. But nothing ever touched me like the arcade machines from Virtuality. If you had played Virtuality boxing against a friend or defeated him in dactyl Nightmare you already are blessed with the wonderfull memories of an epic era where everything seemed possible and future was within grasp every day. As Hunter Thompson would say it: VR Arcades in the middle sixties were a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than 15 years later, you can go up on a steep hill in stereo3d forums and look down, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. | ||
| James Brady (Sinewave) New member Username: Sinewave Post Number: 4 Registered: 2-2009 Rating: N/A |
I just wanted to say that I love the site, I've always been slightly obsessed with 90's VR stuff, and I'm really enjoying reading through the blog. Thanks for sharing all the info! | ||
| Tony Asch (Tone) Junior Member Username: Tone Post Number: 26 Registered: 8-2006 Rating: N/A |
James - thanks for the love! I'll get back to posting shortly now that the new decade has begun. Got to get back to testing another VR-4... VRtifacts.com |
