[HN Gopher] Sega VR Revived: Emulating an Unreleased Genesis Acc...
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Sega VR Revived: Emulating an Unreleased Genesis Accessory
Author : ecliptik
Score : 165 points
Date : 2020-11-20 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gamehistory.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (gamehistory.org)
| ElHacker wrote:
| This is amazing! Can't believe Sega had a VR Headset in 1993 and
| for only $200, it's a bit sad they couldn't get it out there.
|
| I believe VR is coming very close to going main stream, probably
| in less than 5 years from now. Oculus Quest 2 is IMO by far the
| best overall VR device ever, and things will only improve from
| here. That's why I've recently made a career change to work full
| time on VR application development, I truly think this is the
| next big computing platform.
| BorisTheBrave wrote:
| Surprised to discover that the Ono-Sendai of Neuromancer fame was
| an actual cyberspace company.
| [deleted]
| 101008 wrote:
| One of the most interesting articles I've read on Hacker News
| lately. I think it is well written because someone like me with
| zero experience developing videogames or even VR software was
| able to follow most of it (or at least I think I followed it :-)
| )
|
| It is incredible the amount of stuff he had to solve to be able
| to work at the end. I think that if it were me, I would have
| finished the project happily after I surpassed the first
| obstacle, calling it a day. Kudos to everyone involved on this,
| really nice write up!
| krm01 wrote:
| Really fascinating. Along with Nintendo's failed attempt at VR,
| I'm starting to think if VR is really ever going to take off? It
| seems history is repeating itself. We all get excited about VR,
| but it keeps failing to go beyond being a fun gadget. A nice to
| have. Any thoughts on this?
| mattlutze wrote:
| I think there's something in mapping the mental model of
| interacting with your environment to the new controls for that
| environment, which isn't quite finished yet.
|
| Humans are good at making tools invisible or subconscious
| extensions of our physical selves, and there's this moat that
| VR gets stuck in I think on the way to true integrated physical
| extensions. i.e., a hammer becomes consciously
| indistinguishable from the carpenter's hand.
|
| TV-based gaming consoles have had 4 decades of continually
| improving the screen and the input device. How invisible do the
| newest Playstation/Xbox/Switch (pro) controllers feel in your
| hands now?
|
| VR can be immersive, but in the real world outside the goggles
| you're not yet transparently / invisibly integrated into the
| physical things you're near. So you kinda don't yet trust it,
| and some of the cables pull you out of the experience, and
| things are heavy etc.
|
| When VR can live-integrate the world around you transparently
| into your virtual world, and the problems with things that pull
| you out of that subconscious human-tool melding are fixed, then
| I think there's going to be some really epochal things
| happening.
|
| Until then AR seems to approach that integration moat from the
| other side and already looks to be making its way into everyday
| use.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It's called proprioception. It's your body's sense of its
| position relative to itself and to an extent the sense of
| position in your environment. It involves your inner ear,
| eyes, sounds, and even sensation of air moving over body
| parts
|
| VR headsets gives your eyes visual cues that don't
| necessarily match that of your inner ear and body
| positioning. Lag between your inner ear's sensation and what
| your eyes see also causes problems.
|
| Additionally your eyes aren't just a pair of fixed cameras
| mounts in your skull. They constantly scan (saccades) a scene
| and change their focus and that's that's then constructed by
| your visual cortex. The world doesn't have a depth of field
| effect applied to it, your eyes do that for you. Forcing both
| eyes to focus on a particular focal plane causes a lot of
| strain in because your eyes are not identical.
|
| Besides human sensory input the lag and lack of precision of
| the game's sense of your body really fucks with your
| proprioception. Using a traditional controller uses small
| muscles with fast reaction times and little of your large
| motive and balance muscles. You can split your focus easily
| on the events and visuals of the game and work the controls.
|
| With VR you have to make a lot larger movements and use more
| of your muscles for balance. Most people are not highly
| trained athletes their game avatars are and do not have that
| level of coordination or muscle endurance.
|
| VR basically short circuits a ton of your body's senses or
| gives them conflicting input. Some people can adapt, many
| can't adapt for long, and some can't adapt at all.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Your comment makes me wonder how much variation people
| experience when trying VR. Possibly quite a bit. I get what
| you are saying about different cues that are missing, but
| for me it caused very mild nausea, some odd dreams and a
| bit of mild disassociation that passed after a few
| sessions. I wonder if there is some neuroplasticity factor
| that allows some people to more easily rewire to the new
| sensations and still feel natural.
| gfody wrote:
| I think the more serious attempt at VR from that period was
| Sega's R360 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R360
|
| I think VR could spark a comeback for arcades with really
| expensive immersion equipment and infrastructure. Maybe they
| will be more like The Void.
| terramex wrote:
| VR is like Linux on desktop. There are people making solid
| money on it, there is big group of enthusiasts, good quality
| product exists, yet it does not go mainstream. Personally, I'm
| much more bullish on AR and its productivity uses. Pushing
| Linux analogy further it would be VR's 'Android moment'.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| The accessibility of Oculus Quest really seems to have pushed
| it forward a lot. I suspect the low price of v2 will result in
| a double impact between new people buying it and another group
| entirely buying the old Quest used (I got one for just under
| half its retail price recently, mindblowing you can get that
| kind of tech that cheaply now)
| azinman2 wrote:
| Probably some niche markets worth capturing, but we've yet to
| see a killer use case. Maybe one exists, but it's hard to
| suggest that strapping a screen to your face is something that
| everyone will want to use every day. I liken it to a roller
| coaster: they're really fun, but also really intense, so I
| don't want to go on one very often.
| danbolt wrote:
| I'm quite bearish on VR as a mass-market product, and to get
| my point across I usually replace the term "virtual reality"
| with "Nintendo 3DS strapped to your face". I think you've
| kind of touched on my point well.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I recently bought an Oculus Quest 2 as my first VR headset.
| I've been using it about 2 hours a day for the past month. It
| is absolutely beyond being a fun gadget. I am completely
| convinced that some form of VR/AR is the future of computing
| and in many ways that future is here now. A month ago I thought
| it was going to be a fun toy at best and I was completely
| wrong.
|
| I like to think of products in terms of the ah-ha moments they
| can deliver, so here are mine: - The sense of
| presence is incredible. When you slip it on, you go to another
| place. When you take it off, you are surprised you are still at
| home. Every time. - The intuition of using your
| hands and body to interact with the world reminds me of the
| very first time I used an iPhone touchscreen. The best games
| let you pick up familiar objects and interact with them in
| expected ways without instructions or tutorials. -
| The amount of information that can be displayed. A web browser
| the size of a room. A YouTube video the size of an IMAX screen.
| I am very interested in Facebook's Infinite Office app they'll
| be releasing for productivity work. - Social
| experiences that are absolutely unlike talking on the phone or
| video chat and very close to hanging out in person. The social
| dynamics are also changed and people tend to be much kinder,
| less like they are screaming into the twitter void and much
| like they would be in person. I think this has the potential to
| save us from the social media death spiral and get us talking
| to each other again like decent human beings. I have witnessed
| several actual heartfelt apologies when people get offended and
| it gives me hope.
|
| I think there are a couple of hurdles still: -
| The social experiences currently can work, but without eye
| tracking and facial expressions you need a good amount of
| distracting game or group activity to cover over the gap. I
| think the facial expressions could work on lower fidelity
| cartoon avatars just fine, sort of like Apple's AR emoji.
| - The screen quality is pretty much there and the rendering
| quality from the mobile GPU could use a boost but it's also
| serviceable. The biggest issue is that the fresnel lenses
| currently used have too much distortion and blur and cause eye
| strain and make the headset fidgety and uncomfortable.
| - The headset is heavy and awkward to wear and put on. It
| really needs to be closer to a pair of big sunglasses.
| - The apps and games are still in their infancy, though I think
| this is largely a factor of # of units sold and the low amount
| of development dollars invested. Facebook and Valve have been
| making good contributions here but it will take more before
| there is a self-sustaining software ecosystem.
|
| So overall, I'd estimate we are 2-3 generations of the current
| hardware and one spot-on social experience app away from this
| hitting truly billion unit potential, but it is already so, so
| close. It feels like smartphones in 2005 or the internet in
| 1996.
| alonmower wrote:
| I 100% agree, it changed me from thinking of VR as a dumb
| gimmick to starting to seriously consider changing my career
| focus towards VR
| crazygringo wrote:
| I never bought into VR but just got a Quest 2 a few weeks ago
| and it's amazing.
|
| Feels like it was made by Apple, the screen resolution is
| entirely decent, it's ready to use out of the box, no PC
| required.
|
| I haven't even used it for games yet, but I've already been
| blown away by watching movies/TV in a virtual theater on it,
| using Google Street View (the Wander app), and exploring a
| handful of virtual environments.
|
| I think when retina-level screens take off (~4-8x current
| resolution, so 1080p keeps its full glory), it's going to
| become the norm for watching TV/movies by yourself (instead of
| on your phone or laptop) and watching with friends remotely.
|
| When on-device graphics compare with PC graphics cards it'll
| become the norm for gaming too.
|
| As for productivity, when the resolution comes, the big
| remaining question will be lens quality. The further off-center
| you look, the blurrier it gets. But maybe?
| korse wrote:
| I'm interested in the productivity side myself, however I
| haven't had an _off center_ problem. If I move my eyes more
| than a few degrees out of line they start to hurt so I even
| move my head when reading your comment. I honestly didn 't
| think about it much until you mentioned it and I actually
| gave it some thought.
|
| One of the things that I really like is the head tracking in
| headsets. I don't really need to look at 6 monitors at once
| but I want them there in my peripherals so that I can easily
| glance back and forth.
| korse wrote:
| I use an old android phone + google cardboard headset when I do
| drone surveys or inspection. It has become indispensable, as
| the drone camera gimbal is slaved to my head. Much easier to
| inspect hard to reach stuff in (or on) the manufacturing
| facility I work at this way.
|
| I'm always sort of impressed that I am able to have this
| functionality using (literally) the trash of others.
|
| Once the resolution gets high enough that I can read small text
| comfortably, I plan on removing monitors from my office all
| together and migrating to some sort of AR terminal multiplexer.
| The general idea being that I can throw the headset on and wrap
| myself in some sort of window manager. I use a whole pile of
| monitors during daily work and despite needing them all during
| certain development projects, 50% of the time, I've got 2-3
| displays sitting idle which is annoying. Having a 3 dimensional
| bubble of _monitor space_ would fix this nicely for me.
|
| I know this is what work spaces are for, but I've never been
| very proficient switching between them. I prefer to have all my
| current projects visible if I look around me.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Can you provide information on how you set that up? (the
| slaved gimbal) I'd love to recreate that!
| korse wrote:
| https://dji.retroroms.info/
| korse wrote:
| Base station with DJI support called Litchi. Runs on
| Android. Has a nice VR mode that auto integrates head
| tracking. Turn on, switch to VR mode, slide into your pick
| of cardboard style devices and off you go. It isn't fast
| enough response for racing, but is great for
| inspection/maneuvering a drone around inside and out of a
| crowded facility (slowly) without line of sight.
|
| I use an old samsung galaxy for the ground station/dispaly.
| Works excellently for the purpose and cost me nothing.
|
| For work I use a DJI mavic pro with updated firmware to
| remove some pesky restrictions and the DJI phone home
| functions.
|
| If you really want a roll your own solution, check out
| Ardupilot with a Navio II flight controller. This will let
| you construct a full flying telepresence solution to your
| personal specifications. Embedded Linux and ROS built in
| too!
| doomlaser wrote:
| It needs a Pokemon Go. I just got a Quest 2. $299, Apple
| quality. Works by itself or can plug in to a PC and be powered
| by its GPU and CPU. It's waiting for new experiences with mass
| appeal. Valve gave a Half Life incarnation.. it's waiting for
| the right new content.
|
| For creators, there's already amazing stuff like Tilt Brush.
|
| Part of the issue is that VR is great with super high
| resolution displays and 120Hz low latency simulation response.
| The hardware is still catching up to the dream, but it's a lot
| closer. It reminds me of the dream of the 1984 Macintosh or the
| NeXT cube, or the 1993 Newton. Software graphics rasterization
| on 8 MHz 68k / 20mhz ARM cpus.
| AgentME wrote:
| I've had the original Vive and the Index since each of them
| came out, though I didn't regularly use them much until I got
| into VRChat. In a month I've already put more hours into
| VRChat specifically than the total I've done with other
| things in VR. I'm not exactly sure of its mass appeal, but
| it's definitely been the killer app for me and my friends.
|
| I've become somewhat convinced that the killer features of VR
| are in how it works for social games. The ability to
| socialize in 3d space with regular body language present
| (your head and hands are positionally tracked) is great. The
| sense of presence from being in an all-encompassing scene in
| VR makes your mind feel more involved in social situations
| compared to a standard voice call. Having positional audio
| and the ability to see where other people are looking makes
| it easier to follow the flow of conversations. Groups can
| smoothly reform and break apart into multiple separate
| conversations just as easily as they can in real life
| meatspace gatherings, which is something that's much less
| natural in voice calls.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I agree that social is going to be the killer app for all
| the reasons you listed. I think the only missing piece is
| face and eye tracking so those cartoon avatars can have
| some emotionally relatable cartoon faces.
| krm01 wrote:
| I wonder though of this is the case. If we look at early PCs,
| they grew relatively fast. A big driver for that growth was
| digital spreadsheets.
|
| VR has been around for a while. Why hasn't anyone built the
| software that skyrockets VR to the masses. Is it because it
| has no real value beyond entertainment?
|
| For example, for me, having a huge workspace with infinite
| amount of displays is the way to go. It would be a killer
| app. Its availabe today for Quest, but I still havent made
| the jump. The reason being is that we seem to get closer to
| Mixed Reality devices and THAT platform seems to have no-
| brainer killer apps. Including pokemon Go.
| alonmower wrote:
| I bought the quest out of curiosity with low expectations.
| I've tried a few of the games, many of which were novelties
| but have been blown away by Eleven Table Tennis. It
| replicates maybe 98% of what it feels like to play ping pong
| and I've convinced at least five other friends and family to
| get a set so we can catch up, chat, and play some ping pong.
| I play it almost daily now and use it instead of phone calls
| to catch up with my dad.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Anyone who plays Star Wars Squadrons in VR with a Flight Stick,
| finds it hard to go back to non VR gaming. The quality can be
| really excellent now, and I think we have moved from the "Tech
| Demo" stage to Early Nintendo Stage, where there were only 4 or
| 5 great games but they were all worthy of obsessing over and
| iterating on.
|
| Beat Saber I think could sustain the Oculus Quest at this point
| on its own.
|
| When Half Lyfe starts running natively on the Quest we will
| probably see another explosion.
|
| And if they get Mind Craft running on Quest there will be
| millions of kids playing VR for hours every day.
| pr0zac wrote:
| I have a first release Oculus Rift and ended up not really
| using if after the first few weeks because it mostly just felt
| like a cool tech demo and not really ready for regular use.
|
| A friend recently brought over his Valve Index and using it
| felt like it was actually approaching something I could see
| using more than to just show off a fun gadget (as you put it).
| Really the big thing is the screens finally felt good enough
| that I was able to occasionally forget what I was looking at
| was because I had two monitors strapped to my face.
|
| That said, I think I'm probably going to wait one more
| generation before I spend the money on a new headset. Hopefully
| the improvements in gen3 will comparable to those between gen1
| and gen2.
| dougmwne wrote:
| From what you've already seen from the Rift, I would probably
| wait for the model with built in eye-tracking, a new lens
| technology (varifocal?) and either stand-alone or fully
| wireless PC linked. 2 more generations or about 6 years? I
| hope we get there before companies lose interest.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I mean Sega Master System had those cool 3D glasses with a
| missile defense type 3D game.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Is it just me or did the website designer go WAY overboard on the
| banner size and it's practically unreadable on mobile in
| horizontal?... Why do people do this? Do they not care?
|
| Edit: lolokhn
| https://i.ibb.co/9VcJtCn/00-ACECC5-A03-F-4988-8286-99-E7650-...
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| If you really want to rage try it on a phone in landscape. A
| logo and a hamburger icon...and it's half the screen!
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't complain about website formatting, back-button
| breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be
| interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then
| friendly feedback might be helpful._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Kuinox wrote:
| It distract me reading the text, on PC.
| striking wrote:
| Try https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Nah, simply created a uBlock rules, took few seconds.
| JxLS-cpgbe0 wrote:
| I have a global custom stylesheet with #header, #site-
| header, #footer etc hidden by default. 99% of sites are
| improved.
| Kuinox wrote:
| I don't think that modifying that much the website will
| improve my productivity.
|
| I do use a lot of uBlock list that remove annoyance, but
| made some important content disapear sometimes...
| chc wrote:
| They probably don't care, since you can just rotate your phone
| 90deg.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I really want to see someone do something similar: Allow you to
| view emulated VirtualBoy games in a VR headset so you can
| experience the actual 3D effects
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Or for another option, Virtual Boy emulated on a 3DS:
|
| https://github.com/mrdanielps/r3Ddragon
|
| Note also that you can use the 3DS emulator Citra with a head-
| mounted VR display, and apparently it's pretty great:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Citra/comments/c20fu7/citra_in_vr_i...
|
| So for maximum nesting doll fun, it's likely you could run the
| Virtual Boy emulator under Citra, and view it all on your VR
| headset.
| wk_end wrote:
| Sadly r3Ddragon looks quite dead (no updates in five years)
| and isn't very far along (commercial games don't run
| properly, speed is often lacking).
| kevinmmccormick wrote:
| This works flawlessly on the Oculus Go and the Oculus Quest:
|
| https://sidequestvr.com/app/125
| modeless wrote:
| https://github.com/braindx/vbjin-ovr
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| wptr++; /* Skip number of sprites in frame */
| wptr++; /* Skip hotspot offset */ wptr++;
| wptr++;
|
| >Those last 2 pointer increments are skipping over data that goes
| completely unused, and it seems that at some point the data was
| removed from the ANM2FPA.EXE output.
|
| Yea... I wouldn't have found that so easily I don't think. I
| don't just increment pointers like that, and trying to determine
| intent of someone else's code where there are just two random
| increments... this guy must be a lot sharper than me!
| bluesign wrote:
| He has the source code, I guess these comments are from
| original source code.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Oh I get that. My comment was still how easily this could be
| missed even with source.
|
| Maybe it's just me, but I rarely use ptr++ to jump over like
| that. I'm more likely to use ptr[1] that isn't "destructive"
| to the location you started with.
| cirno wrote:
| It saves you needing a separate index variable. If you're
| doing something like LZSS decompression it makes the
| relative window offsets natural (absolute). Not sure I'd
| recommend coding like that today, unless ptr was a smart
| pointer that had bounds checking, but for the time period
| it was a perfectly fine technique.
| crazygringo wrote:
| This is insane, I had _no idea_ Sega almost launched a VR headset
| in _1993_... and for $200?!
|
| I'm not surprised it didn't work out, but I never imagined we had
| the tech even for low-resolution tiny color LCD screens back
| then, or the "intertial measurement unit".
|
| I mean, I lived through those years and now I kind of have to
| retroactively alter what I thought was possible...
| J5892 wrote:
| The Game Gear came out in 1990 (in Japan). I assume they used
| similar screens for the headset.
|
| The tracking is what surprised me the most. Watching the trade
| show videos in the article, it's amazing how good it was with
| what was likely just an accelerometer.
| 14 wrote:
| Then you really missed out on a treat the [1]Nintendo
| Virtualboy released in 1995. I had a lot of fun playing it
| sadly it never took off. [1]
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Po5iEqDDv3U
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I wonder what sort of IMU could that have been? Back then MEMS
| was not a thing, so how did that work? I am puzzled how they
| managed to target 200$
| ChickeNES wrote:
| Actually, the first MEMS devices predate this by decades,
| though the first MEMS gyroscopes and accelerometers were
| actually developed around the same time as the Sega VR,
| though not available commercially. The article does link to
| the patent for the motion tracker used, and it's pretty odd
| (and not MEMS):
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US5526022A/en
| ngold wrote:
| If I remember correctly, everyone in the company was super
| excited...then they came out of the prototype room and
| immediately canceled it.
|
| I think it might have made people sick.
| alexisread wrote:
| A couple of years later, Virtuality got roped into nearly
| releasing the Jaguar VR headset (with Atari) which moved the
| bar significantly: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WTWyKNN_Lgg
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(page generated 2020-11-20 23:00 UTC)