I actually got hold a VB developement kit about 1 month before finishing a SNES project. I took the manual home (bad translation) but within the month the boss had changed his mind and dropped the blessed thing. Anyone know of a good online manual (and devkit should one exist). The thing that I clearly remember was that the screens were made by reflecting a bright red LED off a mirror that was fixed on 2 edges and moves in 1 axis for the lie and the other for the scan... cool idea I thought. The best idea I saw in virtual headsets (back in 92) was one that was mono. Its the fact that you can look around rather than stereo (that is lost after a few metres unless the object is massive). I suggest that since mono would be cheaper and could be added to a normal game (like doom or whatwever) much faster, then I would guess only Nintendo could go for it, making games that work both with & without it. Comments (like IDIOT!) for examle, Sean
My comment is why is this in the Sony forum. I played Virtual Boy once. It was kind of neat. But the problem with the eye strain made it hopeless. That and being an unportable, portable system.
So you were (going to be) an official VB developer? Please tell me everything you remember. Which company did you work for? It was Core Design, right? Were there any projects planned? Why did they drop the Virtual Boy? Did you keep the VB dev kit or the manual or anything? About your questions (if I understood them right), I got scans of some official docs my site: http://www.vr32.de/content/tech/documents/Virtual Boy Development Manual.pdf and http://www.vr32.de/content/tech/documents/VUE Development System Preliminary Operation Manual.pdf should be most interesting. There's also a port of gcc: http://gccvb.vr32.de/ Are you interested in homebrew VB development or is it just nostalgia?
Yes, it was Core Design. We were looking at converting some MegaCD games over. It turns out that the VB basically displays a few layers of 2D with added parallax. The CPU was quite cool but the display gives me a headache. We didn't have a C compiler for it so it would have had to be 100% Assembly. Actually, the neatest idea in the whole machine was the way that it drew the screens. It used 1 LED per screen (eye) and shone an LED onto a mirror, 2 edges of which could be moved so it could replicate a raster display. I'm sorry I don't remember more, but I really only played with it. I don't think I got to play with the audio at all but I seem to recall that it was pretty damned basic; sort of 2 Gameboy chips in one...
ah i see. do you remember which games? weren't all (or most of) your sega cd games running on a raycasting engine? but i assume those projects never got anywhere? was the virtual boy (dev) stuff thrown out when your boss dropped the platform?
