VIRTULAITY V.R ARCADE SYSTEM

Hi all,

I just managed to get hold on a ultra rare Virtuality system. its the guts of the system that has been ripped out but all fully working and all. Just wondering if anyone out there has a similar system and maybe the discs that run it I would be very interested to hear from you. I have two games on the system V.T.O.L and Battlesphere. The unit is a B.T research and development machine. Hope to hear from someone soon. I have pictures of the unit but dont know how to post them on here?

 

What model Virtuality system do you have? I have 2 SU2000's and an SU2000E. I also have a PILE of extra parts. I've helped several folks get theirs up and running as these systems are very difficult to get to work, unless you have knowledge of them.

The games you mentioned definitely don't sound like SU2000 games. Battlesphere in particular was only made for the Atari Jaguar, so I'm interested in what that is??? What is VTOL stand for?

Good stuff, congrats on landing a Virtuality system. They are fantastic.

 

nice to hear from someone! and so fast!! V.T.O.L is a flight sim game where you have to dogfight land on aircraft carriers etc, battlesphere is just a shoot em up in space im quite impressed with this system even though its 13 years old! i have all the original tech manuals etc, would love to get some more games. all these run on a 19" rackmount amiga 3000 system. its only the internals of the system as I have said. any help and vice versa would be great.!

 

Here is the website of the company that owns all the rights to the remaining Virtuality systems. Could you please check the various types they have and let me know which kind you have? I've never seen a Virtuality unit running on an Amiga. Thanks:

http://www.arcadianvr.com/

 

I would say its more of the internals of the SD2000 system. I have two sets of twin lap joysticks, but the Vissette has a backpack you starp to your waist. It seems to me this was a system that was used for research and development. Yes its an Amiga 3000 inside and arcanianvr dont have the games that I have on this system.

 

Wow, this is really cool. Pics would be awesome, especially of the Visette, internals of the 3000 and the tracking system. Looking forward to hearing more. I have all the games listed at Arcadian VR, so if you're looking to acquire more I'm sure we can work something out.

 

Yes I can get piccys to you no problem. Do you want me to mail it to your private email address??? more games would be ace although Im guessing they are running on a pc board. some pictures of the internals of your unit would be great. Does your motion tracking board run on RS232 parallel port?

 

I played a few of these games back in the day, the big one was terodactyl terror or something like that. It was pretty lame, but cost five bucks to play!

 

Dactyl Nightmare or Dactyl Race for Eggs. I agree, I think those games are lame. Surprisingly though, I was told they were the more popular ones. The best games are:

Zone Hunter
Missile Command VR
Pac Man VR
Ghost Train (one of the absolute BEST)

...and for the SU3000 - Zero Hour rocks....

 

any emulator for that system ?

 

Even if there was it would be a waste of time. The interface is what's remarkable about them.

 

Man I always wanted one of these systems, but 20 fucking thousand? hell, this is more than 10 years old! why is still so expensive? what was the price back in the day?

Indeed, I think that what really killed VR was the lack of good games...

 

I appreciate your point, the games were crap by most evaluations of them I've ever heard, but I think the problem was more that the technology simply wasn't ready to provide immersive, responsive worlds. Possibly still isn't, although I read an article on some commercially available goggles that provide responsive movement recently, and the basic consensus was that "the tech is ready". They were not cheap - somewhere around the $1000 mark if I remember correctly.

 

Well most of the dizzyness most people felt in these systems werent due to bad googles but the fact is that at the time most 3D games were 20fps and below, thus you saw everything moving in slow motion, kinda like being drunk.

Today, even when the googles at $1000 the rest of the arcade would be $800 for the unit and $900 for mid-end PC internals, more than enough to play games like Prey, Quake4 or Prey at XGA and 60fps. Overall, the thing could be sold at $4000 with anice profit.

If it arcades werent dead already, VR could be the next big bussiness. Maybe this tech could make a comeback in LANs...

 

Actually, the problem wasn't so much with the framerate but with the response time of the headset, which is kind of what you're getting at. If the latency between you moving your head and the world you see moving is anything other than practically instantaneous, your brain gets confused and you get motion sickness. Apparently that's an issue that has been resolved.

 

Not only do you forget several things from that price list but do you think publishers are gonna let you use their games for free?

 

Dude is a PC, and as I said the arcades are dead, so who's gonna charge you?

BTW, what item? additional motion sensors? gyros?

 

Who's going to charge you? Whoever deals with the R&D adapting the games to the new hardware. Ditto for distribution. Licensing costs as Paulo pointed out.

Arcades aren't "dead", by the way, if they were no arcade games would be made. You tend to generalise from your own experience a bit too much.

 

Is you mean worldwide we could say they are dead compared to just some years ago. In japan, that's another market, but I dont think VR would make a killing there either.

R&D costs in these systems are below nothing, there's already plenty of software for headsets and motion/tracking sensors. Is not that expnesive, the question is: there's a market for this?

I say maybe, but it would only fill a very small niche...

 

I think you're massively underestimating the procedures and cost involved in bringing any machine to market, expecially one with the health and safety implications that VR would have to deal with.

Probably not, at least for the games you mentioned, but then I didn't imply that there was.