As a VR developer, it's great to hear your research of what was. I didn't know about this story as a child when even I was on the VR Hype Train(tm), but I think it was for the best that Sega canceled the product due to headaches and eyestrain, or what we call "comfort" in the industry today. With PC and Console processing power being thousands of times faster than what was available on the Sega Genesis, screens being ~50x higher pixel count, and components being miniaturized significantly each year, and wireless technology to drive these high bandwidth, low latency applications, VR is finally positioned to take off not as a replacement for current video games, but as a brand new medium to play games, and tell stories in. Comfort issues are completely mitigated as long as the developer doesn't constantly break best practice rules, and the tools for creating immersive 3d environments are FREE now. While it's fun to look at the past, I think the future is going to bring a lot of innovation that we haven't even dreamt up yet and that's what excites me to be a VR Developer TODAY.
+Alexander Mejia great insight! I agree, it's pretty obvious Sega was right to not release it but man, I can't help but applaud them for being so ambitious. It was just too soon. As you eloquently summarized modern VR, now is the time to really get excited about VR. I highly recommend you guys look up Alex's company, Human Interact, and their upcoming game Starship Commander. human-interact.com
Actually I predict the demise of VR this time around as well. No one I know has a VR headset (I know a lot of gamers) and we are all of an age where we can afford these things now no matter the cost. It’s funny how there seems to be endless optimism for VR. Didn’t Zuckerberg pay 3 billion for his VR tech? I wonder what he thinks of his purchase now.
There is so much time, tallent, and development time poured this round into VR that it's hard to imagine a world where we all just put it up and say "Nope, wasn't really worth it after all." In medical, they are curing lazy eye, and PTSD with higher rates than any therapy or drug usage. In the real estate market they are mocking up homes/offices way cheaper than they could have in the past using real time game engines (which are free right now) and the process of traveling all over town will be a thing of the past when you can walk around 10 homes way quicker in VR to narrow down the search, in the finance industry they are paying money hand over fist for data visualization where people can manipulate data in VR, and people can watch on the sidelines using their phones and tablets. There's so much more to the VR industry than games and entertainment. I'm personally bullish on the Entertainment side, but I'm also developing an entertainment product so take that for what you will.
To be fair, the Gaming VR market is young, and could still collapse from price alone. If not enough users are there to buy content, the content that consumers demand (high quality AAA titles on par with Hollywood Production values) will just not be viable to create. The good news is that the numbers you can find from research firms that track these things show promise of hitting this target.
Many Different Things you seem to have been so eager to insult me you appear to have been quick to make a number of assumptions, some of which could have been avoided by actually reading what I said. You seem to think those that don't believe the hype are all clearly morons for having a different point of view to you. I have however gathered all my intellectual ability together and managed to get through the entirety of your post. You assume the anti-hype majority want VR to fail. This could not be further from the truth. I am an avid gamer and spend plenty of time and money on gaming and would love to experience the the kinds of immersive gameplay promised in the sci-fi movies and books I read growing up. Also as I alluded to in my first post, my friends and I are all grown up with full time jobs and plenty of disposable income. We can afford it. I am also old enough to have grown up in the heady days of the first round of VR hype in the 90's and play video games to this day so can compare this to the latest round VR hype trains started by Palmer Luckey and Mr Zuckerberg. Im sure there are plenty of people out there putting up with motion sickness, sore necks and rehashed or inferior games that have been brought to them by the latest round of VR devices. You seem however to be heavily in denial about the success of these systems and devices techcrunch.com/2017/08/26/this-vr-cycle-is-dead. Yes Playstation has been the most successful with 1 million units sold but there is a user base of around 60 million? So that's very roughly 1 in 60 people adopting the technology. Been on Steam recently? Where are all the advertisements for VR? Where did they go? Don't ask me I have no idea it's like they vanished into thin air. Maybe the latest games promised by playstation for VR will be awesome. There's that new one, I think it's called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or something. Can't wait to check it out. Oh look I wrote a giant wall of text too! I must be smart.
As the programmer for the launch title "Iron Hammer", I was disappointed when Sega got cold feet and dropped Sega VR. I spend a lot of time trying to create a VR game that would not make the player sick. True, we learned a lot over the past +25 years in making VR, but some of those first games were not that bad. Thanks for for doing a video on this bit of forgotten Video game history.
+Steve Bjork Hi Steve, I'm honored you took the time to watch and comment. I found a little bit of Iron Hammer game footage from a few years ago but opted not to use it since it was shot with a camera pointed at a TV screen and obviously didn't use the VR headset. I give Sega a lot of credit for attempting something so ambitious. The people working on the hardware and games such as yourself are pioneers. One thing I couldn't find was why third party testing was done so close to the original launch date. I don't suppose you happen to know why? I have my own theories but I like to leave personal conjecture out of my videos. As a side note I loved the Rocketeer game as a kid. I believe that was one of the ones you worked. Thanks again, sir!
will maybe you could revive iron hammer now that psvr, oculus, and vive are out you could bring it out, and psvr and oculus is great, maybe sega could revive the projects from sega vr and release them on psvr or oculus.
Steve, many years ago an ex-SOA employee gave me large proto boards of both "Iron Hammer" and "Nuclear Rush" -- both of which appear to be complete and playable on standard Genesis hardware without the head tracking and dual display. Do you recall if there were versions developed that specifically required the helmet? From what I can see another prototype of "Iron Hammer" exists and the binary has been dumped but so far it appears I have the only known prototype of "Nuclear Rush". This same Sega employee told me all of the existing VR Helmet hardware was sent back to Japan in the mid-90s and has never been seen since. BTW, nice to see a famliiar name from my old CoCo days -- your Color Computer port of Zaxxon blows me away to this day. I'm totally amazed at what you guys were able to wring out of a 6809E and NTSC red/blue color artefacting!
Its nice to see someone giving some love to how innovative Sega actually was. Everyone (rightly so mind you) talks about all the tech advancements Nintendo was responsible for. Sega seemed to be thinking just a little too far into the future with some of its stuff, the tecnology wasn't up to the ambition
Mike Mitchell they should have spend more time defining the quality of their inventions instead of rushing to put them out and think ahead when it came to power and future proofing...and making sure extra money wouldn’t have to be spent by consumer ahead in the near future ..like the genesis...if they had a 12bit palette & sound chip with crisper ,clearer voice samples and music,with more kbs...to store more audio ..and the 6button controller at launch..I think they would have still been here...then to think they was into 3d before systems was fully cacpable,but designed he Saturn around 2d cd rom games ?...something makes no sense ..!..at all...
I don’t know, I don’t want to take anything away from sega, but Nintendo did the same thing with the virtual boy. I give sega credit though, they provided huge competition to Nintendo and that probably made both companies better, making them both take risks they might not of otherwise.
People just have different tolerances. Some people will never be able to fully tolerate VR. PSVR titles actually run pretty well. Even when they're 60 fps, they feel like 120fps. However, narrow viewing angles and super low resolution is known to give people nausea. That said, I would try out PSVR2 when that comes out. Increased FOV and high resolution should alleviate the biggest hardware issues with the original in terms of motion sickness.
95 Indianapolis mall. Went to hooters when it really was hooters. Outside was 2 huge VR machines that you stood in the circle and couldn't leave. Our game was a shooting game and had a flying dinosaur. Big map. Everything was blocky but I remember it like it was yesterday. Great times. Wish I could go back 20 years and start over lol
@@tylerblade3020 Did you even watch the video? They massively screwed up on the VR thing and that was just the beginning of the end. Being 'ahead of your time' is sometimes a nice way of saying 'their ideas were unrealistic and poorly-planned'.
The Virtual Boy is mentioned a few times because it was marketed for the 90's VR craze. But as we all know, it wasn't really a "VR" system since it did no head tracking. It's feature was just displaying stereoscopic images thus it was more akin to the 3DS or Sega Scope glasses.
As a kid, seeing that bit about Sega VR in their magazine blew my mind. VR has always been my personal "end-game" for tech. My holy grail, kinda. And today, I'm watching this video in my Rift!
As an avid gamer and someone who works at a VR startup, this is super fascinating. In fact, one of our users sent me this video. Really great research and digging up of footage and images. Great work. Subbed.
Yeah, all throughout 1993, I was waiting to get my dirty little paws on a Sega VR set to no avail. At least I got Gunstar Heroes, Rocket Knight, and a superior version of Street Fighter 2 for my Genesis instead. Secret of Mana, Starfox, Super Mario All-Stars, and Link's Awakening rounded out the excellent Nintendo side of things for me. Getting a Virtual Boy at launch finally stifled my interest in VR for the next 20+ years and I still have yet to get an Oculus Rift. I should probably wait for the higher res lenses at the very least.
yeah nice hardware..ahead of its time..but the games🙈 sega jp had only arcade in mind.. sega america did well with the sports genre..saved sega in terms of games sega brazil(tectoy) still selling mega drives still better then shitendo..thou snes and 64 were nice consoles i miss sega too but their sonic team racing is shit...the new one..yakuza i hate it
A nice video. I love the early vr limited 3D graphics that we thought was the ultimate. It had maybe 500 polygons. I hope retro style games adopt this someday.
+GTV you're so right! I remember thinking that games couldn't possibly look better. Lol. I've seen a few modern low poly games and they do look pretty nice.
I'm in my mid-30s, and when I was a kid VR seemed like it was just around the corner, and then suddenly everyone stopped talking about it. I recently tried the PSVR for the first time, and had a great time, but boy did it make me sick if it was anything with a lot of forward up and down motion. now i try to imagine that for a kid, barfing all over the living room: I'm really glad I didn't get to try it until I was an adult. still, it's really cool, especially Thumper, which looks and feels like VR was promoted as looking when I was a kid.
Could you imagine 5 or 6 kids at a birthday just after eating loads of candy and Soda all hyped up full of junk food playing this, poor mom standing around with the power chuck rags waiting to clean up.
I used to have a "victormaxx - stuntmaster" that plugged into the snes and genesis... i used to love playing virtua racing in first person with it... it did not split the image to create depth (single screen), nor did it have head tracking...but was a screen on your head and for the time it was pretty immersive if the game had first person... which was rare at the time.
I remember having my dad look everywhere for this for Christmas. I have a Rift, Vive, Gear VR, and Daydream and I'm still upset that I never got to try this. It looks so awesome!
The voice of Kalinske, a presentation of Pesce, not ads but rather _segments_ of old shows. Man, _where the hell did you get all this stuff from?_ Amazing!
I am lucky to have had the chance to experience VR, which has been a longtime childhoos dream od mine. I enjoyed watching this and knowing the historical background of this wondeful technology; thanks for sharing this video with us!
I remember when it was all the craze, movies like Lawnmower Man, among other things made a huge deal about it. Then it just kind of went away until now.
I played some those Virtuality machines when they opened a VR arcade in vienna in the 90's. It was awesome, Boxing, Dactyl Nightmare and some seated car game that was a lot like Rocket League. Sadly it closed after just 2 years, interest wasn't big enough at the time and it was pretty expensive.
There's a lot of different disciplines that had to come together to make VR a reality. Everything from neuroscience to acoustic engineering to computer engineers.
I really love these videos. It's quite interesting how ambitious these projects were back then, even if the technology wasn't primed for whatever they were striving for.
+Xalen Maru Thank you. I'm surprised the Sega VR is so rarely talked about. Then again with it not being released I guess a lot of people just don't know about it.
I think history would have deemed it a curiosity piece at best and fodder for the spate of "angry reviewers" on YT ten years ago. Sega were throwing every wacky idea they had out into the market back then (chairs that were giant joysticks Etc.) so this wouldn't have been any different.
Yeah, I think you're right. This would've been perfect for an AVGN episode had it been released. I selfishly wish they would have released it just so I could try it out but I suppose keeping kids' brains from imploding is somewhat important. 😊
If it had been functional, say on something with more power than my alarm clock, it could have spawned a series of upgrades and innovations. Instead it ended up being a small footnote in the laundry list of things SEGA did wrong.
I think you video game nerds are generally pessimistic about media in general, could have been awesome, you dont know, you assume the negative which is characteristic of this community
I always thought Sega was a head of is time just look at the Dreamcast I had a Genesis first console that made me a gamer I had a nes before but there was something different about the Genesis console
Yea I was thinking that, It looks sleeker than some modern headsets, unfortunately the the technology needed just didn't exist yet. I do wonder whether the Sega VR would give an experienced VR user VR sickness, how much of its sickness issues were caused by adjustment time instead of limited tech.
@@Clara_Page I'd guess so. Modern headsets only make some people sick, under certain provocative situations but when things go totally off the rails, even an experienced person can get sick or get a crippling headache within a second. There was however the Forte VFX1 for decent DOS gaming machines in 1994 which apparently didn't nearly suffer that much from these issues, so it most def was doable at the time.
If the hardware design hadn't changed, it wouldn't run on any modern system. 'Hardware' really means what's inside it, not the outer shell of a component, so the hardware has definitely completely changed. Even the appearance isn't 'the same' any more than every pair of glasses is 'the same'.
I really enjoyed this one. Nice work! I still have my virtual boy and I still like it, i'll play it about once a year. The kid version of me would have gone crazy for this sega headset.
+Useless Duck Company Thanks man! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Not releasing it was the right decision but I selfishly wish they would have. I'd love to try one out just to see what it was like.
I always thought Sega was a head of is time just look at the Dreamcast I had a Genesis first console that made me a gamer I had a nes before but there was something different about the Genesis console
3:09 Virtual Boy was never intended to be a virtual reality machine. It was intended to be a 3D device. It just happened to have you look into a display that looks like a VR HMD.
Good video as usual. Also, side note, Nintendo actually did something similar to the Sega Scope 3D for the Famicom. It was called the Famicom 3D System and never made it outside of Japan. Worked pretty much the same way, too.
+CorvetteZ06owner Thanks a lot, I really appreciate that. It's something I've been working on so don't be surprised if the voiceovers aren't quite as good in my earlier videos. Lol
I'm watching this in Oculus Home while firing a blaster at the giant wall sized window it's displayed on and typing on a VR keyboard. I guess it took a while but we got there.
I remember seeing the ad for this in a magazine while standing in the "Zappers!" part of Blockbuster and losing my mind. I was a huge fan of VR at the time and wanted to own my very own system. I remember combing through every magazine I could get my hands on, calling 800 numbers for Sega asking about it, and sending letters begging to have a chance to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, everything fell silent. One of the biggest things on my bucket list is to get my hands on Sega VR still. It always looked cool, sounded interesting, and really lit a fire under my interest for VR in general. There was some really awesome information I never knew in the video. Thanks for the fantastic coverage of one of the coolest pieces of video game history. Made my whole week!
+Kzero Thanks man. I wish some of the prototypes had made it out into the wild. I know that it wouldn't have exactly been great but I would love to try one out.
The games would have if it had been done right, but realistically, technology still wasn't there in a reasonable price point at all. When Dreamcast was out, LCD televisions were barely hitting the market and 3d wasn't anything. a VR Dreamcast would have probably cost $2000 if it were made well enough to play for more than a few minutes.
I remember when the Virtuality machines first came out, they were something so futuristic and exciting! I only know of 2 machines that were located in a shopping mall close to me and they always had queues of people wanting to try them out! I never got to try them myself and I was gutted about that! I then had hope of VR coming into our homes but it just didn't happen! 30 years later and its here, and I've got to say at the 80s and 90s stage the technology was simply not there, at least certainly not to make it successful as it is now. I think where we're at now with it is the right time, and it's only going to get better :-)
Consumer technology wasn't there yet. Commercial technology was. Making it affordable was a problem. I think we could have had VR during the 64 bit era, but because of the failure companies were not willing to try it again.
Oh really, if it had been more advanced then, it would be more advanced now? Really! Well, it wasn't successfully released, because the technology wasn't there. Had a flying car been successfully released back then, imagine how refined it would be now! Just imagine! Because that didn't happen, just like Sega making good VR.
This was awesome. Loving hearing new things about a subject you think you knew all there was too. Well researched man. Do you have the links to the podcast and talks used in the video? I'd love to hear them talk at length on things SEGA, VR, and beyond.
+Manjoume thanks man. So the Tom Kalinske audio is from the "r/retrogaming podcast episode 7." I ended up saving the mp3 locally but it wasn't easy to find. I believe to find it I had to put this link into the way back machine at archive.org: revrob.com/sci-tech/264-tom-kalinske-talks-about-his-time-overseeing-sega-as-its-ceo-in-the-90s-reveals-that-sega-passed-on-virtual-boy-technology-considered-releasing-3do The talk with Mark Pesce is at this link: ruclips.net/video/RfaYO6o5f40/видео.html If you want even more info you can find a word doc with most of my sources here: drive.google.com/file/d/0B7bw-DZcYVuHZXhfRzNtMEZOYk0/view?usp=sharing
Gald you're getting 100k+ views on videos. It's quality & genuine content, not the click bait garbage RUclips is flooded with. Good to see a decent channel getting the views.
+Hail To The Chin thanks. Yeah, I've been pretty fortunate with view the last couple of months. I never thought I'd have one, let alone several videos with 100K views. It's crazy.
It's good stuff! Thinking back to the 90's pushing VR and it stalling - much like motion control with the Power Glove (which did find success with the Wii as a flash in the pan) - and now everyone is rushing to it again with what seems like limited consumer enthusiasm is interesting (could be wrong, but I don't feel a genuine mass market buzz around VR). It's like how 3D films come around every 20+ years and then fade out again. The mixed reception probably doesn't have much to do with the tech as each time VR is pushed, like 3D film, there are lovers and haters, even though graphics & tech get way better. It's probably not the tech, it's people's eyes and brains. I have tried 2 VR headsets, watched a few films with different 3D glasses and hate the whole experience. Everything is slightly out of focus and blurry - especially where motion is concerned. Yet, friends watching the same film and trying the same headsets at conventions have not agreed with what I saw and enjoyed the experience. Maybe it's similar to the white bg/black text vs. black bg/white text issue blogs face. No one ever complains about white bg/black text, but people do complain about the opposite causing vision issues and eye strain and probably why, no matter the tech, VR will always fail? Unless they can plug the experience straight into the brain Matrix style and forego the eyes.
+Hail To The Chin I think there are two big hurdles VR is facing now. One, is an affordable price point for a high quality headset PLUS a powerful enough pc to run it properly. Two, truly great VR titles. There are a few but not many. I've only tried modern VR a few times and it's feast or famine. Either a great experience or an underwhelming mess. Hopefully the new VR bubble doesn't burst before they get it all together.
He is very lucky to break through! Hard to do and he deserves it. If only every quality channel lurking out there could get big and replace the garbage out there!
Another great video man!. I think the technology just wasn't ready at the time but I find it very cool that Sega at least tried to innovate. Some people seem to think Nintendo is the only one to ever innovate when that just isn't true. Right now Sony seems to be carrying the torch as their VR headset seems to be the most popular at the moment. It's up to them to seize the opportunity and not waste it like so many others have with VR.
Absolutely, they deserve some credit for that. When are we gonna hear you talk about some Sony stuff?. You could go over the Nintendo PlayStation debacle or perhaps the underrated PSP.
+cloudtx I touch on the Sony-SNES CD in my CD-I video but I don't go into it in a ton of detail. I'll probably cover the PlayStation 1 at some point though and go into detail then.
PSVR is just the highest selling, but only because you can use any PS4. It is "popular" based on sales, but not on impression if you've tried higher end HMDs. It is easily the least innovative of the big 3 HMDs. No 360 degree motion tracking and they are using old technology for their motion controls which can be poor at times. Obviously it is the only choice for console only users. Not saying it is garbage, but it isn't a forerunner in the technology. Sadly console peripherals often stagnate for years until a stronger console is created. PC is where technology is ever changing and can evolve the quickest from different sources. Not just a single company. I would say Valve has the most VR innovation at the moment, they even pushed Oculus forward back in the day when they shared their tech with them. It was their demonstration room they set up for them that got Facebook interested in buying them out.
I understand what you're saying but I think the most important thing is to get VR to become mainstream and stop being niche. In that regard, Sony is winning the battle. While other devices may be more advanced, if the PS VR gets more and more popular it will get more and more games. Because of that, I prefer it.
Would love to have seen some Genesis side scrollers in VR similar to the 3DS ports instead of full 1st person view games! Amazing how VR is STILL a contemporary discussed tech to this very day! Great vid!
Great video. I can understand shelving it because of motion sickness. Even current VR is still struggling with this issue (this is why many first person games have a teleport mechanic instead of offering free movement). It must have been even worse in the Sega VR with undoubtedly lower framerates and (going by other 3D titles on the Genesis) I'm guessing more sluggish gameplay.
ive heard alot of people say it makes them sick, and a few people who have tried my vive and played some of the more extreme games with all the comfort options off have to stop after 15 min or so, but for me, ive never once gotten sick. ive been slightly off balance when getting used to trackpad locomotion, but now i am completly unphased, and is as natural and mouse and keyboard aiming in a first person shooter, hell its LESS disorienting than a fps played on a monitor IMO. a big problem is people dont adjust the IPD correctly, or have the headset on tight enough. if its loose on your head, then the entire geometry of the virtual world will become skewed and distorted as you turn your head, and i think this has a huge impact on people getting sick. if bethesda doesnt have the option for trackpad locomotion in Doom VFR, im going to be insanely pissed off. just teleporting around is a fucking stupid idea for doom, and if it works as well as it does in Sairento VR, then there is NO reason why it wouldnt for doom, and doom is the LAST game that should be trying to make people feel comfortable and safe. sure keep the option for just teleportation, but dont hold back the rest of us.
It should be the standard in games to have the option to choose between teleportation and free locomotion. I don't like it when a game forces me to use teleportation only. Another beef I have is blinders that can't be turned off (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft ಠ_ಠ).
I'd say VR sickness issue is more about getting used to it. There is a popular term , "getting your VR legs". Which very much correlates with sea sickness. I had a difficult time with locomotion at first in my Vive, but after two weeks, I haven't gotten sick since. If I'm showing VR to friends or family, I put them in teleportation experiences/games only. Only a few of my friends have gotten to play enough to get used to locomotion and play games like Onward and Pavlov. They no longer get motion sick as well.
SEXCOPTER RUL I only played a few times. As a very young child. And never gotten sick. As an adult, I was on a ship to Korea, USMC...no sickness. But on the way back, sea sick as a dog. Point: it's all about our own personal ways, and actions that ALSO affect us. I don't think it was ONLY the games that was a factor. But a lot of average people...then after that, average game players, weren't active in real life. Then this computer generated game, which our brain has to constantly focus and unfocus on and translate to being real, close to real, or not real at all....THEN it moves in such a way to simulate real movements....it continuously make us FEEL like we're moving....all those factors put into the minds of below average active kids and nerd adults...of course motion sickness will be a problem. They should've sucked it up for the most part, is what I'm saying
As usual, great content. I find your knowledge and professionalism to presenting important aspects of gaming history to be quite informative and entertaining. Keep up the great work!
Counterpoint: First Wii bowling broke flat screen TVs, now it's VR breaking flat screen TVs. Back in the Genesis days, TVs were as solid as bricks. So in some ways, Genesis VR was safer (for your wallet) than today's VR. ;)
What an awesome video. I grew up with the Mastersystem, Mega-drive (Spectrum before that), so this was great viewing. I've just invested in a VR headset, too, and it's a fantastic experience. Plus, being a hobbyist dev, I'm gonna move to VR. The future is looking good!
Yeah, Nintendo really gave VR a bad name in hindsight, so Sega might have been the final nail in the coffin for VR. Look how people still give VR crap. But on the flip side, if it did do well we lost about 20 years of research on it..
I remember reading about this in EGM and that very issue of Sega Visions magazines and i was intrigued by it at the time. But as stated, we never got that chance to play with it.
Poor sega always to ahead of the times. Ill never understand why vr struggles so much Outside of high end devices. The capabilities of even just a google cardboard headset havent even been properly utilized or expanded upon yet people clamor to 500$ devices. Wish things like early vr development and lost causes like voxelnauts wouldve made the cut
I was a VR developer for about 6 months, and I did get quite sick whenever there was movement in vr. Over time I've managed to build up a resistance to it and haven't been sick for quite a while.
I have been messing around with an oculus in unity and going below 90fps makes you feel sick pretty quickly. Could those early lcds even refresh fast enough? I imagine the megadrive topped out around 60fps interlaced but the add on vr box referenced in the video could have boosted it I suppose. Sprite based vr would be pretty cool to try though, space harrier or afterburner vr could have been awesome (although flipping the player upside-down is another way of inducing nausea i found). Pity they didnt ditch the motion tracking and just have an immersive 3d display, I could see that working a bit better and cheaper than full on vr although I guess the nausea would still be problematic in certain games. I tried an early vr system in the 80`s that used crts and the headset was suspended from the roof as it was so heavy. The graphics were just simple polygons with flat shading on a chequerboard floor. Amazing how far we have come and how much more cpu, gpu and display tech had to advance before proper vr in the home became viable.
+meetoo594 I was actually wondering about the refresh rates myself but I couldn't find any conclusive numbers. That being said the numbers I found for it were basically pretty low, as you'd expect.
I imagine the lcd`s would be gamegear or lynx quality, pretty low refresh and the blur would probably make most games unplayable. The screendooring would be horrendous as well. Mini crts like the ones in camcorder viewfinders would have been a better bet at the time, although the megadrive probably still couldnt generate 90+fps. Love your channel btw, loads of info I wasnt aware of.
Nick871203: Yeah, pal is 25fps in 2 alternating interlaced fields for 50hz displays, ntsc is 30fps/60hz. I guess Sega would have boosted the display tech in an external unit for higher fps. You are still limited by the refresh rate of the hmd displays though. I have no idea how much a 90hz+ mini lcd/crt cost back then, if they even existed but theres no way Sega could have sold this thing and profited from it
Hey man just wanted to say I've been watching your videos since the Super FX one and it is great to see you getting more subscribers and views. It's always awesome to see people getting recognized for their great content. Cheers!
+K7 Avenger thanks so much man. I got pretty lucky that RUclips's mysterious algorithm feel in love with me for a month or so lol. Appreciate the support 😊
AirCooledMan2006 vive and rift were also too far ahead. haha :-D we would still need faster GPUs and better displays to improve comfort and immersion. Of course sega was top far ahead. They were so far ahead, it was unplayable.
Thank you for a great video - brought back a lot of memories. As one that wrote and worked in this sector of that phase of VR development - I feel you may have glossed over some importance of SEGA licensing Virtuality's hardware, and made both a arcade machine (ElectroBrain) and a ATP attraction (VR-1) using VR technology (was more than just hiring two employees). It was however the US SEGA division that commissioned and developed the SEGA VR system - separate of the success of the amusement projects investment in VR. Also we need to be careful of quote some of the sources - a lot of the SEGA magazines were clearly Advertorial engines, and the rumors of how much was actually playable and what was the actual quality of the SEGA VR prototypes (if at all representative of the final system) has been a question many have dodged. Remember, some previous SEGA execs tried to claim they pulled the SEGA VR because of health concerns, just to avoid answering the question of how much of the hardware was hype, and what it could achieve. The reality was the promise of the hardware was vaporware, and the performance was poor, and the claims to meet the low bar of the 90's could not be achieved. I wrote a number of articles calling out the difference from the successful Virtuality and VR-1 systems supported by SEGA, and the failure to supply specs or reality from SEGA VR - a hyperbole train we see today! Still this was a well produced feature - thank you.
nice vid! I totally forgot that Sega was advertising the Sega VR before. I saw some ads on gaming mags but I didn't know what happened to it. Keep up the good work!
As a VR developer, it's great to hear your research of what was. I didn't know about this story as a child when even I was on the VR Hype Train(tm), but I think it was for the best that Sega canceled the product due to headaches and eyestrain, or what we call "comfort" in the industry today.
With PC and Console processing power being thousands of times faster than what was available on the Sega Genesis, screens being ~50x higher pixel count, and components being miniaturized significantly each year, and wireless technology to drive these high bandwidth, low latency applications, VR is finally positioned to take off not as a replacement for current video games, but as a brand new medium to play games, and tell stories in. Comfort issues are completely mitigated as long as the developer doesn't constantly break best practice rules, and the tools for creating immersive 3d environments are FREE now.
While it's fun to look at the past, I think the future is going to bring a lot of innovation that we haven't even dreamt up yet and that's what excites me to be a VR Developer TODAY.
+Alexander Mejia great insight! I agree, it's pretty obvious Sega was right to not release it but man, I can't help but applaud them for being so ambitious. It was just too soon. As you eloquently summarized modern VR, now is the time to really get excited about VR. I highly recommend you guys look up Alex's company, Human Interact, and their upcoming game Starship Commander.
human-interact.com
Actually I predict the demise of VR this time around as well. No one I know has a VR headset (I know a lot of gamers) and we are all of an age where we can afford these things now no matter the cost. It’s funny how there seems to be endless optimism for VR. Didn’t Zuckerberg pay 3 billion for his VR tech? I wonder what he thinks of his purchase now.
There is so much time, tallent, and development time poured this round into VR that it's hard to imagine a world where we all just put it up and say "Nope, wasn't really worth it after all." In medical, they are curing lazy eye, and PTSD with higher rates than any therapy or drug usage. In the real estate market they are mocking up homes/offices way cheaper than they could have in the past using real time game engines (which are free right now) and the process of traveling all over town will be a thing of the past when you can walk around 10 homes way quicker in VR to narrow down the search, in the finance industry they are paying money hand over fist for data visualization where people can manipulate data in VR, and people can watch on the sidelines using their phones and tablets. There's so much more to the VR industry than games and entertainment.
I'm personally bullish on the Entertainment side, but I'm also developing an entertainment product so take that for what you will.
To be fair, the Gaming VR market is young, and could still collapse from price alone. If not enough users are there to buy content, the content that consumers demand (high quality AAA titles on par with Hollywood Production values) will just not be viable to create.
The good news is that the numbers you can find from research firms that track these things show promise of hitting this target.
Many Different Things you seem to have been so eager to insult me you appear to have been quick to make a number of assumptions, some of which could have been avoided by actually reading what I said. You seem to think those that don't believe the hype are all clearly morons for having a different point of view to you. I have however gathered all my intellectual ability together and managed to get through the entirety of your post.
You assume the anti-hype majority want VR to fail. This could not be further from the truth. I am an avid gamer and spend plenty of time and money on gaming and would love to experience the the kinds of immersive gameplay promised in the sci-fi movies and books I read growing up. Also as I alluded to in my first post, my friends and I are all grown up with full time jobs and plenty of disposable income. We can afford it.
I am also old enough to have grown up in the heady days of the first round of VR hype in the 90's and play video games to this day so can compare this to the latest round VR hype trains started by Palmer Luckey and Mr Zuckerberg.
Im sure there are plenty of people out there putting up with motion sickness, sore necks and rehashed or inferior games that have been brought to them by the latest round of VR devices. You seem however to be heavily in denial about the success of these systems and devices techcrunch.com/2017/08/26/this-vr-cycle-is-dead. Yes Playstation has been the most successful with 1 million units sold but there is a user base of around 60 million? So that's very roughly 1 in 60 people adopting the technology.
Been on Steam recently? Where are all the advertisements for VR? Where did they go? Don't ask me I have no idea it's like they vanished into thin air.
Maybe the latest games promised by playstation for VR will be awesome. There's that new one, I think it's called The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim or something. Can't wait to check it out.
Oh look I wrote a giant wall of text too! I must be smart.
As the programmer for the launch title "Iron Hammer", I was disappointed when Sega got cold feet and dropped Sega VR. I spend a lot of time trying to create a VR game that would not make the player sick. True, we learned a lot over the past +25 years in making VR, but some of those first games were not that bad. Thanks for for doing a video on this bit of forgotten Video game history.
+Steve Bjork Hi Steve, I'm honored you took the time to watch and comment. I found a little bit of Iron Hammer game footage from a few years ago but opted not to use it since it was shot with a camera pointed at a TV screen and obviously didn't use the VR headset. I give Sega a lot of credit for attempting something so ambitious. The people working on the hardware and games such as yourself are pioneers. One thing I couldn't find was why third party testing was done so close to the original launch date. I don't suppose you happen to know why? I have my own theories but I like to leave personal conjecture out of my videos. As a side note I loved the Rocketeer game as a kid. I believe that was one of the ones you worked. Thanks again, sir!
will maybe you could revive iron hammer now that psvr, oculus, and vive are out you could bring it out, and psvr and oculus is great, maybe sega could revive the projects from sega vr and release them on psvr or oculus.
Hi Steve, do you have any more information about your work or experience on this project anywhere?
@steve bjork the VR Legend! Such an amazing thing to see a comment from yourself! Your work was and still is amazing!
Steve, many years ago an ex-SOA employee gave me large proto boards of both "Iron Hammer" and "Nuclear Rush" -- both of which appear to be complete and playable on standard Genesis hardware without the head tracking and dual display. Do you recall if there were versions developed that specifically required the helmet? From what I can see another prototype of "Iron Hammer" exists and the binary has been dumped but so far it appears I have the only known prototype of "Nuclear Rush". This same Sega employee told me all of the existing VR Helmet hardware was sent back to Japan in the mid-90s and has never been seen since. BTW, nice to see a famliiar name from my old CoCo days -- your Color Computer port of Zaxxon blows me away to this day. I'm totally amazed at what you guys were able to wring out of a 6809E and NTSC red/blue color artefacting!
always impressed by the old footage you manage to dig up
+aritark thanks!
Its nice to see someone giving some love to how innovative Sega actually was. Everyone (rightly so mind you) talks about all the tech advancements Nintendo was responsible for. Sega seemed to be thinking just a little too far into the future with some of its stuff, the tecnology wasn't up to the ambition
+Mike Mitchell Totally agree. Sega deserves credit for trying something so ambitious.
Mike Mitchell they should have spend more time defining the quality of their inventions instead of rushing to put them out and think ahead when it came to power and future proofing...and making sure extra money wouldn’t have to be spent by consumer ahead in the near future ..like the genesis...if they had a 12bit palette & sound chip with crisper ,clearer voice samples and music,with more kbs...to store more audio ..and the 6button controller at launch..I think they would have still been here...then to think they was into 3d before systems was fully cacpable,but designed he Saturn around 2d cd rom games ?...something makes no sense ..!..at all...
Dude, why are you stalking wrestling for 0_0
Same way I do now, I rerouted my urethra into my colon years ago so I poo a weird sluice of poo and pee
I don’t know, I don’t want to take anything away from sega, but Nintendo did the same thing with the virtual boy. I give sega credit though, they provided huge competition to Nintendo and that probably made both companies better, making them both take risks they might not of otherwise.
I have the PS4 VR headset and it's great but even with all the new technology, you can still get sick playing it.
People just have different tolerances. Some people will never be able to fully tolerate VR. PSVR titles actually run pretty well. Even when they're 60 fps, they feel like 120fps. However, narrow viewing angles and super low resolution is known to give people nausea. That said, I would try out PSVR2 when that comes out. Increased FOV and high resolution should alleviate the biggest hardware issues with the original in terms of motion sickness.
Wow, the design of this thing looks cooler than any of the vr headsets out today.
@@laos85 I would simply be happy with cords that don't get tangled and messed up
@@jonnym4670 Quest 2 - No cords
@@DavenBigelow oh yea i got one of those last Xmas so much better then WMR
SEGA was way ahead of it's time, a true gamer's company.
+Pip I give them a lot of credit for trying something so ambitious.
Pip yes always
Until they saturated their own market with shiet.
Xband was the first to to online gaming but it was available first on the Genesis. GTA was always 3D it just changed the view in GTA3.
@DAYD111 didn't Sony steal the PlayStation from Nintendo?
0:45 I played this VR game in a Mall VR Arcade with my uncle. We spent the entire allotted time trying to find each other.
I play this game with my dad...
still trying to find him
I did it too in a Calgary mall in 94. Those 40 bucks I spent remain the best money I spent to this day !!
95 Indianapolis mall. Went to hooters when it really was hooters. Outside was 2 huge VR machines that you stood in the circle and couldn't leave. Our game was a shooting game and had a flying dinosaur. Big map. Everything was blocky but I remember it like it was yesterday. Great times. Wish I could go back 20 years and start over lol
Clearly if the Sega VR just showed a picture of Trip Hawkins in his nice sweater vest every few seconds no one would have gotten sick.
+HistoricNerd in fact, they would've felt better than ever.
S H U T U P
Lol
rofl
sega was way ahead of its time
koolerpure Ikr why did they stop
@@tylerblade3020 Did you even watch the video? They massively screwed up on the VR thing and that was just the beginning of the end. Being 'ahead of your time' is sometimes a nice way of saying 'their ideas were unrealistic and poorly-planned'.
The Virtual Boy is mentioned a few times because it was marketed for the 90's VR craze.
But as we all know, it wasn't really a "VR" system since it did no head tracking. It's feature was just displaying stereoscopic images thus it was more akin to the 3DS or Sega Scope glasses.
As a kid, seeing that bit about Sega VR in their magazine blew my mind. VR has always been my personal "end-game" for tech. My holy grail, kinda.
And today, I'm watching this video in my Rift!
+JoeGamer81 that's awesome 😊
As an avid gamer and someone who works at a VR startup, this is super fascinating. In fact, one of our users sent me this video. Really great research and digging up of footage and images. Great work. Subbed.
+Michelle Osorio's Kill9TV Thanks so much! 😊 The Sega VR obviously had its issues but I love how ambitious Sega was to even attempt this.
U said u work on vr. Is there a bigger vr coming by chance. I know the technology is growing but just curious
Michelle Osorio's Kill9TV I would one hundred percent agree with you.
Yeah, all throughout 1993, I was waiting to get my dirty little paws on a Sega VR set to no avail. At least I got Gunstar Heroes, Rocket Knight, and a superior version of Street Fighter 2 for my Genesis instead. Secret of Mana, Starfox, Super Mario All-Stars, and Link's Awakening rounded out the excellent Nintendo side of things for me.
Getting a Virtual Boy at launch finally stifled my interest in VR for the next 20+ years and I still have yet to get an Oculus Rift. I should probably wait for the higher res lenses at the very least.
I miss sega consoles
me too!
I have a monitor dedicated yo my ol Sega Genesis Nomad now :)
@@WrestlingWithGaming and me
Me too😢
yeah nice hardware..ahead of its time..but the games🙈
sega jp had only arcade in mind..
sega america did well with the sports genre..saved sega in terms of games
sega brazil(tectoy) still selling mega drives
still better then shitendo..thou snes and 64 were nice consoles
i miss sega too
but their sonic team racing is shit...the new one..yakuza i hate it
A nice video. I love the early vr limited 3D graphics that we thought was the ultimate. It had maybe 500 polygons. I hope retro style games adopt this someday.
+GTV you're so right! I remember thinking that games couldn't possibly look better. Lol. I've seen a few modern low poly games and they do look pretty nice.
Try Superhot, it adopted the low poly look and has an awesome UI that draws inspiration from the past. The UI is actually part of the game.
I think Morphite would be a good fit for the PSVR.
Or try digital space Traveller
Coloured and low polygon games with no gourad shading or textures look sooo good
gaming companies had serious guts and plenty of innovation back then....
+vangelis milonas well put.
Thy didnt have to report to shareholders I think thats a big issue.
Hell look at EA and the yellow tab carts.
Now they have micro transactions and their core bases mothers wallets
@@aussieguy1012 that's probably why valve is picking up the slack. I hope they never enter the stock market.
I'm in my mid-30s, and when I was a kid VR seemed like it was just around the corner, and then suddenly everyone stopped talking about it. I recently tried the PSVR for the first time, and had a great time, but boy did it make me sick if it was anything with a lot of forward up and down motion. now i try to imagine that for a kid, barfing all over the living room: I'm really glad I didn't get to try it until I was an adult.
still, it's really cool, especially Thumper, which looks and feels like VR was promoted as looking when I was a kid.
Could you imagine 5 or 6 kids at a birthday just after eating loads of candy and Soda all hyped up full of junk food playing this, poor mom standing around with the power chuck rags waiting to clean up.
I used to have a "victormaxx - stuntmaster" that plugged into the snes and genesis... i used to love playing virtua racing in first person with it... it did not split the image to create depth (single screen), nor did it have head tracking...but was a screen on your head and for the time it was pretty immersive if the game had first person... which was rare at the time.
I remember having my dad look everywhere for this for Christmas. I have a Rift, Vive, Gear VR, and Daydream and I'm still upset that I never got to try this. It looks so awesome!
The voice of Kalinske, a presentation of Pesce, not ads but rather _segments_ of old shows. Man, _where the hell did you get all this stuff from?_ Amazing!
I am lucky to have had the chance to experience VR, which has been a longtime childhoos dream od mine. I enjoyed watching this and knowing the historical background of this wondeful technology; thanks for sharing this video with us!
Thanks for watching!
I remember when it was all the craze, movies like Lawnmower Man, among other things made a huge deal about it. Then it just kind of went away until now.
And they said I needed a gtx 1050 ti and a core i5
+John Squarez nah, just plug that Oculus into a Genesis. What could possibly go wrong? 😂
Frederick Röders but then you'd just have a 360 degree video player. They only track orientation not spacial position.
You content is exactly what i want to see. Nostalgic, Analytical, To the point and with clean narrative voice and very good editing!
Awesome to hear man. Thanks!
Your videos are awesome, always covering topics I rarely see elsewhere.
+Nerman Talakic thanks man. I just try to cover stuff that's interesting to me. Glad to see I'm not the only weirdo into these topics lol
VR has been promised to me since I was a kid. I'm glad that it's finally reachable
I played some those Virtuality machines when they opened a VR arcade in vienna in the 90's. It was awesome, Boxing, Dactyl Nightmare and some seated car game that was a lot like Rocket League. Sadly it closed after just 2 years, interest wasn't big enough at the time and it was pretty expensive.
The over-ear headphones and general strap layout - the Oculus CV1 looks a lot like this. Sega VR definitely were ahead of their time in many areas.
What a well-produced video! You’ve got a great channel going on and it’s now one of my favorites.
Thanks!
Great video! The picture of the sega channel at the end took me back to the best days of my childhood!
I remember all this. We were so hyped. Now I've got a Rift that hype is finally realised. Just took a long long time.
There's a lot of different disciplines that had to come together to make VR a reality. Everything from neuroscience to acoustic engineering to computer engineers.
Great video! Sad to see that almost 25 years later VR still isn't as main stream as everyone thought it would be.
It's 2019 it's time for Sega to finally release it.
1:40 I've never seen a shirt look more 90's, lol.
I really love these videos. It's quite interesting how ambitious these projects were back then, even if the technology wasn't primed for whatever they were striving for.
+Darkslayer289 Thanks man. Despite it not coming to market I love that Sega even tried something so ambitious.
3:00 powerfull AMIGA - Yeah!
Yeah. I had the Amiga 500 back in late 80s, and it was a generation ahead any gaming system.
I remember watching Lawnmower Man in the 90’s and thought VR was the future and nothing else mattered 😂
Great video as always. It's nice to get behind the scenes info from this era of gaming.
+Xalen Maru Thank you. I'm surprised the Sega VR is so rarely talked about. Then again with it not being released I guess a lot of people just don't know about it.
I think history would have deemed it a curiosity piece at best and fodder for the spate of "angry reviewers" on YT ten years ago. Sega were throwing every wacky idea they had out into the market back then (chairs that were giant joysticks Etc.) so this wouldn't have been any different.
Yeah, I think you're right. This would've been perfect for an AVGN episode had it been released. I selfishly wish they would have released it just so I could try it out but I suppose keeping kids' brains from imploding is somewhat important. 😊
I couldn't help but hear your voice in my head as I read this comment, LBJ...which only served to make it all the more entertaining.
L-O-U!
If it had been functional, say on something with more power than my alarm clock, it could have spawned a series of upgrades and innovations. Instead it ended up being a small footnote in the laundry list of things SEGA did wrong.
I think you video game nerds are generally pessimistic about media in general, could have been awesome, you dont know, you assume the negative which is characteristic of this community
I always thought Sega was a head of is time just look at the Dreamcast I had a Genesis first console that made me a gamer I had a nes before but there was something different about the Genesis console
9:28 In 1993, virtual reality theaters were being planned all over the world...
lol, still waiting on these theaters.
SEGA must have been on to something if the hardware design hasn't changed in the past 26 years
how much more can you possibly change it?
Yea I was thinking that, It looks sleeker than some modern headsets, unfortunately the the technology needed just didn't exist yet.
I do wonder whether the Sega VR would give an experienced VR user VR sickness, how much of its sickness issues were caused by adjustment time instead of limited tech.
@@Clara_Page I'd guess so. Modern headsets only make some people sick, under certain provocative situations but when things go totally off the rails, even an experienced person can get sick or get a crippling headache within a second. There was however the Forte VFX1 for decent DOS gaming machines in 1994 which apparently didn't nearly suffer that much from these issues, so it most def was doable at the time.
If the hardware design hadn't changed, it wouldn't run on any modern system. 'Hardware' really means what's inside it, not the outer shell of a component, so the hardware has definitely completely changed. Even the appearance isn't 'the same' any more than every pair of glasses is 'the same'.
I really enjoyed this one. Nice work! I still have my virtual boy and I still like it, i'll play it about once a year. The kid version of me would have gone crazy for this sega headset.
+Useless Duck Company Thanks man! I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Not releasing it was the right decision but I selfishly wish they would have. I'd love to try one out just to see what it was like.
I always thought Sega was a head of is time just look at the Dreamcast I had a Genesis first console that made me a gamer I had a nes before but there was something different about the Genesis console
3:09 Virtual Boy was never intended to be a virtual reality machine. It was intended to be a 3D device. It just happened to have you look into a display that looks like a VR HMD.
Whether or not it was intended as a VR machine, its name was marketed to capitalize on the concept of VR.
i guess the sega vr handheld unreleased acessorie for the gamegear was the virtual gear
They should release these games in a compilation on steam for vr.
Good video as usual. Also, side note, Nintendo actually did something similar to the Sega Scope 3D for the Famicom. It was called the Famicom 3D System and never made it outside of Japan. Worked pretty much the same way, too.
Thanks. I actually never heard of the Famicom 3D system. Might have to try to hunt one of those down.
By far, you have the best commentator’s voice I have heard on youtube gaming channels. 👍🏻 You have a new subscriber!
+CorvetteZ06owner Thanks a lot, I really appreciate that. It's something I've been working on so don't be surprised if the voiceovers aren't quite as good in my earlier videos. Lol
I'm watching this in Oculus Home while firing a blaster at the giant wall sized window it's displayed on and typing on a VR keyboard. I guess it took a while but we got there.
The future truly is now
I remember seeing the ad for this in a magazine while standing in the "Zappers!" part of Blockbuster and losing my mind. I was a huge fan of VR at the time and wanted to own my very own system. I remember combing through every magazine I could get my hands on, calling 800 numbers for Sega asking about it, and sending letters begging to have a chance to get my hands on it. Unfortunately, everything fell silent. One of the biggest things on my bucket list is to get my hands on Sega VR still. It always looked cool, sounded interesting, and really lit a fire under my interest for VR in general.
There was some really awesome information I never knew in the video. Thanks for the fantastic coverage of one of the coolest pieces of video game history. Made my whole week!
+Kzero Thanks man. I wish some of the prototypes had made it out into the wild. I know that it wouldn't have exactly been great but I would love to try one out.
DreamCast VR would have been killer.
The games would have if it had been done right, but realistically, technology still wasn't there in a reasonable price point at all. When Dreamcast was out, LCD televisions were barely hitting the market and 3d wasn't anything. a VR Dreamcast would have probably cost $2000 if it were made well enough to play for more than a few minutes.
@@jamescarter3196 like that OLD VR system where you shoot at each other. Then the VR went dead due to price.
No it still would have been shit. VR was nowhere near being ready for anything until probably the 360 or PS3
This was something I remember reading about, but never really seeing much of as a kid back in the day. Thank you for bringing this story to light.
+D3Vlicious Quite welcome. Thanks for watching.
Back when Nintendo wasn't the only company to try something new.
Don't get all memberberried up. we have decent VR now.
@@UmVtCg Thats the point, it was a new thing then. It is not new now.
Always quality content. Keep it coming! I love watching your documentaries.
+A Ham thanks!
I remember when the Virtuality machines first came out, they were something so futuristic and exciting! I only know of 2 machines that were located in a shopping mall close to me and they always had queues of people wanting to try them out! I never got to try them myself and I was gutted about that! I then had hope of VR coming into our homes but it just didn't happen! 30 years later and its here, and I've got to say at the 80s and 90s stage the technology was simply not there, at least certainly not to make it successful as it is now. I think where we're at now with it is the right time, and it's only going to get better :-)
Consumer technology wasn't there yet. Commercial technology was. Making it affordable was a problem. I think we could have had VR during the 64 bit era, but because of the failure companies were not willing to try it again.
This was a super informative video with lots of footage that i have never seen before!
Thanks for the awesome content.
Thanks for watching man!
holy shit I had that POPULAR SCIENCE edition :) I remember reading it every day page by page. Especially the VR section. Man we came a long way
Had this been successfully released imagine how refined VR tech would be by now...
Oh really, if it had been more advanced then, it would be more advanced now? Really! Well, it wasn't successfully released, because the technology wasn't there. Had a flying car been successfully released back then, imagine how refined it would be now! Just imagine! Because that didn't happen, just like Sega making good VR.
I've watched this on my Virtual desktop with my VR headset.. crazy how times have changed. Excites me for what's to come!
Sweet!! Love your vids...thank you for all that you do!!!
+Paul Raso thanks for the support man, it's very much appreciated.
As always a masterfully well done game history doc. You just keep getting better thumbs up.
+Steve Evans thanks so much Steve. Comments like this one are super encouraging.
This was awesome. Loving hearing new things about a subject you think you knew all there was too. Well researched man.
Do you have the links to the podcast and talks used in the video? I'd love to hear them talk at length on things SEGA, VR, and beyond.
+Manjoume thanks man. So the Tom Kalinske audio is from the "r/retrogaming podcast episode 7." I ended up saving the mp3 locally but it wasn't easy to find. I believe to find it I had to put this link into the way back machine at archive.org:
revrob.com/sci-tech/264-tom-kalinske-talks-about-his-time-overseeing-sega-as-its-ceo-in-the-90s-reveals-that-sega-passed-on-virtual-boy-technology-considered-releasing-3do
The talk with Mark Pesce is at this link:
ruclips.net/video/RfaYO6o5f40/видео.html
If you want even more info you can find a word doc with most of my sources here:
drive.google.com/file/d/0B7bw-DZcYVuHZXhfRzNtMEZOYk0/view?usp=sharing
Awesome content I appreciate the research and quality and the diverse topics.Keep em coming.
+Aussie Guy thanks man. Definitely more to come
*IT"S LIKE BEING THERE! YOUR IN CONTROL OF THE UNIVERSE!*
+liz white lol 😂
7:48
But I already control the universe!!! just not very well... sorry America I might have to abandon this save file and start a new one
Lol
Great job doing your research and creating this video! Thank you. I hope to see a Sega VR prototype unit in person one day
+Manuel Clément thanks! I'd love to try it out myself.
Gald you're getting 100k+ views on videos. It's quality & genuine content, not the click bait garbage RUclips is flooded with. Good to see a decent channel getting the views.
+Hail To The Chin thanks. Yeah, I've been pretty fortunate with view the last couple of months. I never thought I'd have one, let alone several videos with 100K views. It's crazy.
It's good stuff!
Thinking back to the 90's pushing VR and it stalling - much like motion control with the Power Glove (which did find success with the Wii as a flash in the pan) - and now everyone is rushing to it again with what seems like limited consumer enthusiasm is interesting (could be wrong, but I don't feel a genuine mass market buzz around VR).
It's like how 3D films come around every 20+ years and then fade out again. The mixed reception probably doesn't have much to do with the tech as each time VR is pushed, like 3D film, there are lovers and haters, even though graphics & tech get way better. It's probably not the tech, it's people's eyes and brains. I have tried 2 VR headsets, watched a few films with different 3D glasses and hate the whole experience. Everything is slightly out of focus and blurry - especially where motion is concerned. Yet, friends watching the same film and trying the same headsets at conventions have not agreed with what I saw and enjoyed the experience.
Maybe it's similar to the white bg/black text vs. black bg/white text issue blogs face. No one ever complains about white bg/black text, but people do complain about the opposite causing vision issues and eye strain and probably why, no matter the tech, VR will always fail?
Unless they can plug the experience straight into the brain Matrix style and forego the eyes.
+Hail To The Chin I think there are two big hurdles VR is facing now. One, is an affordable price point for a high quality headset PLUS a powerful enough pc to run it properly. Two, truly great VR titles. There are a few but not many. I've only tried modern VR a few times and it's feast or famine. Either a great experience or an underwhelming mess. Hopefully the new VR bubble doesn't burst before they get it all together.
He is very lucky to break through! Hard to do and he deserves it. If only every quality channel lurking out there could get big and replace the garbage out there!
+GTV aww, thanks 😊
Those big giant helmets still look like they feel more comfortable than the stock Quest 2. Weight distribution isn't some new concept.
Love the design of the headset,
+Liam Cooper yeah, I think it's actually pretty cool looking. The design really held up well over the years.
Awesome job with this video! I'm impressed, it was definitely worth a no play weekend! Can't wait to see what you do next.
Thanks! It was a fun one to do.
never clicked that play button this fast in my life. thanks for another awesome video! Still excited for that 100k sub hehe
+Sonsky Infante haha. Thanks for continuing to check the channel out!
I did the same... I kinda remember this being talked about when was young ✨
This was a really well narrated documentary. It was a good watch with my tea, thanks.
+Deaf Omega Thanks for checking out. I appreciate it!
Another great video man!. I think the technology just wasn't ready at the time but I find it very cool that Sega at least tried to innovate. Some people seem to think Nintendo is the only one to ever innovate when that just isn't true.
Right now Sony seems to be carrying the torch as their VR headset seems to be the most popular at the moment. It's up to them to seize the opportunity and not waste it like so many others have with VR.
+cloudtx thanks man. Yeah, it had its problems but I think Sega deserves a lot of credit for trying something this ambitious.
Absolutely, they deserve some credit for that. When are we gonna hear you talk about some Sony stuff?. You could go over the Nintendo PlayStation debacle or perhaps the underrated PSP.
+cloudtx I touch on the Sony-SNES CD in my CD-I video but I don't go into it in a ton of detail. I'll probably cover the PlayStation 1 at some point though and go into detail then.
PSVR is just the highest selling, but only because you can use any PS4. It is "popular" based on sales, but not on impression if you've tried higher end HMDs. It is easily the least innovative of the big 3 HMDs. No 360 degree motion tracking and they are using old technology for their motion controls which can be poor at times. Obviously it is the only choice for console only users. Not saying it is garbage, but it isn't a forerunner in the technology. Sadly console peripherals often stagnate for years until a stronger console is created. PC is where technology is ever changing and can evolve the quickest from different sources. Not just a single company.
I would say Valve has the most VR innovation at the moment, they even pushed Oculus forward back in the day when they shared their tech with them. It was their demonstration room they set up for them that got Facebook interested in buying them out.
I understand what you're saying but I think the most important thing is to get VR to become mainstream and stop being niche. In that regard, Sony is winning the battle. While other devices may be more advanced, if the PS VR gets more and more popular it will get more and more games. Because of that, I prefer it.
The qualities of your videos are insane, and you are an example for this genre.
Great video on this, love seeing early VR information. Remember Lawnmower Man? lol
Still enjoy watching that movie every now and then to this day :O
Retro Game Players remember that game? It was sooo difficult
I still play it every now and then and yes it is a very hard game!
Well done, great video, huge amount of time and research put into it. Subscribed.
Thanks!
Mind-blowing! █-)
Nathie!!
Nice ascii emoji
+Nathie Fancy seeing you here! lol ;-)
Would love to have seen some Genesis side scrollers in VR similar to the 3DS ports instead of full 1st person view games! Amazing how VR is STILL a contemporary discussed tech to this very day! Great vid!
Great video. I can understand shelving it because of motion sickness. Even current VR is still struggling with this issue (this is why many first person games have a teleport mechanic instead of offering free movement). It must have been even worse in the Sega VR with undoubtedly lower framerates and (going by other 3D titles on the Genesis) I'm guessing more sluggish gameplay.
ive heard alot of people say it makes them sick, and a few people who have tried my vive and played some of the more extreme games with all the comfort options off have to stop after 15 min or so, but for me, ive never once gotten sick. ive been slightly off balance when getting used to trackpad locomotion, but now i am completly unphased, and is as natural and mouse and keyboard aiming in a first person shooter, hell its LESS disorienting than a fps played on a monitor IMO.
a big problem is people dont adjust the IPD correctly, or have the headset on tight enough. if its loose on your head, then the entire geometry of the virtual world will become skewed and distorted as you turn your head, and i think this has a huge impact on people getting sick.
if bethesda doesnt have the option for trackpad locomotion in Doom VFR, im going to be insanely pissed off. just teleporting around is a fucking stupid idea for doom, and if it works as well as it does in Sairento VR, then there is NO reason why it wouldnt for doom, and doom is the LAST game that should be trying to make people feel comfortable and safe. sure keep the option for just teleportation, but dont hold back the rest of us.
It should be the standard in games to have the option to choose between teleportation and free locomotion. I don't like it when a game forces me to use teleportation only. Another beef I have is blinders that can't be turned off (I'm looking at you, Ubisoft ಠ_ಠ).
I'd say VR sickness issue is more about getting used to it. There is a popular term , "getting your VR legs". Which very much correlates with sea sickness.
I had a difficult time with locomotion at first in my Vive, but after two weeks, I haven't gotten sick since.
If I'm showing VR to friends or family, I put them in teleportation experiences/games only.
Only a few of my friends have gotten to play enough to get used to locomotion and play games like Onward and Pavlov. They no longer get motion sick as well.
Gameplay and Talk only bitch asses complain about sickness. There is no problem.
SEXCOPTER RUL I only played a few times. As a very young child. And never gotten sick.
As an adult, I was on a ship to Korea, USMC...no sickness. But on the way back, sea sick as a dog.
Point: it's all about our own personal ways, and actions that ALSO affect us. I don't think it was ONLY the games that was a factor. But a lot of average people...then after that, average game players, weren't active in real life. Then this computer generated game, which our brain has to constantly focus and unfocus on and translate to being real, close to real, or not real at all....THEN it moves in such a way to simulate real movements....it continuously make us FEEL like we're moving....all those factors put into the minds of below average active kids and nerd adults...of course motion sickness will be a problem.
They should've sucked it up for the most part, is what I'm saying
As usual, great content. I find your knowledge and professionalism to presenting important aspects of gaming history to be quite informative and entertaining. Keep up the great work!
Thanks so much!
Another cool video. Keep it up!
+foamidable thanks so much man. Already three pages into a script for another video 😁
Superb! Greetings from Germany :-)
+foamidable wow, Germany. Didn't know anyone from there watched these. That's awesome 😁 . Greetings from Florida, USA.
I love the instrumentals you be having in the background
Players hurting themselves seems like a valid excuse seeing vr today
Counterpoint: First Wii bowling broke flat screen TVs, now it's VR breaking flat screen TVs. Back in the Genesis days, TVs were as solid as bricks. So in some ways, Genesis VR was safer (for your wallet) than today's VR. ;)
What an awesome video. I grew up with the Mastersystem, Mega-drive (Spectrum before that), so this was great viewing. I've just invested in a VR headset, too, and it's a fantastic experience. Plus, being a hobbyist dev, I'm gonna move to VR. The future is looking good!
+doghous3 Thanks for checking it out man. I give credit to Sega for trying something so ambitious but unfortunately the tech just wasn't there yet.
Watching this video on my Vive just to be ironic and/or a jackass.
+Baron von Quiply 😂
Well! I remember seeing this in Sega Pro magazines in the UK at the time, but I had no idea it got so close to release! Nice video, thanks 👍
Thanks and thank you for watching.
Yeah, Nintendo really gave VR a bad name in hindsight, so Sega might have been the final nail in the coffin for VR. Look how people still give VR crap. But on the flip side, if it did do well we lost about 20 years of research on it..
This is why i like sega, they make the risky decisions, even when they dont pay off, they are at least willing to try.
Love Sega🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
I remember reading about this in EGM and that very issue of Sega Visions magazines and i was intrigued by it at the time. But as stated, we never got that chance to play with it.
Poor sega always to ahead of the times. Ill never understand why vr struggles so much Outside of high end devices. The capabilities of even just a google cardboard headset havent even been properly utilized or expanded upon yet people clamor to 500$ devices. Wish things like early vr development and lost causes like voxelnauts wouldve made the cut
I was a VR developer for about 6 months, and I did get quite sick whenever there was movement in vr. Over time I've managed to build up a resistance to it and haven't been sick for quite a while.
I have been messing around with an oculus in unity and going below 90fps makes you feel sick pretty quickly. Could those early lcds even refresh fast enough? I imagine the megadrive topped out around 60fps interlaced but the add on vr box referenced in the video could have boosted it I suppose. Sprite based vr would be pretty cool to try though, space harrier or afterburner vr could have been awesome (although flipping the player upside-down is another way of inducing nausea i found).
Pity they didnt ditch the motion tracking and just have an immersive 3d display, I could see that working a bit better and cheaper than full on vr although I guess the nausea would still be problematic in certain games.
I tried an early vr system in the 80`s that used crts and the headset was suspended from the roof as it was so heavy. The graphics were just simple polygons with flat shading on a chequerboard floor. Amazing how far we have come and how much more cpu, gpu and display tech had to advance before proper vr in the home became viable.
+meetoo594 I was actually wondering about the refresh rates myself but I couldn't find any conclusive numbers. That being said the numbers I found for it were basically pretty low, as you'd expect.
I imagine the lcd`s would be gamegear or lynx quality, pretty low refresh and the blur would probably make most games unplayable. The screendooring would be horrendous as well.
Mini crts like the ones in camcorder viewfinders would have been a better bet at the time, although the megadrive probably still couldnt generate 90+fps.
Love your channel btw, loads of info I wasnt aware of.
+meetoo594 Yeah, I assumed they'd be considerable to the game gear, maybe a bit better at best. Thanks for checking the channel out.
i dont think the megadrive can do 60 let alone 30... i think it topped at 25 frames. hence why VR would never ever work with it lol.
Nick871203: Yeah, pal is 25fps in 2 alternating interlaced fields for 50hz displays, ntsc is 30fps/60hz. I guess Sega would have boosted the display tech in an external unit for higher fps. You are still limited by the refresh rate of the hmd displays though. I have no idea how much a 90hz+ mini lcd/crt cost back then, if they even existed but theres no way Sega could have sold this thing and profited from it
Hey man just wanted to say I've been watching your videos since the Super FX one and it is great to see you getting more subscribers and views. It's always awesome to see people getting recognized for their great content. Cheers!
+K7 Avenger thanks so much man. I got pretty lucky that RUclips's mysterious algorithm feel in love with me for a month or so lol. Appreciate the support 😊
I feel sorry for any kid who won a VR headset.
Great video, it is a shame Sega was never able to solve these issues and I would really like to try one of the prototype headsets if they still exist!
Fuck this "too far ahead of the times" attitude! There is no such thing as too far ahead of one's time! NEVER!
AirCooledMan2006 vive and rift were also too far ahead. haha :-D we would still need faster GPUs and better displays to improve comfort and immersion.
Of course sega was top far ahead. They were so far ahead, it was unplayable.
Thank you for a great video - brought back a lot of memories.
As one that wrote and worked in this sector of that phase of VR development - I feel you may have glossed over some importance of SEGA licensing Virtuality's hardware, and made both a arcade machine (ElectroBrain) and a ATP attraction (VR-1) using VR technology (was more than just hiring two employees).
It was however the US SEGA division that commissioned and developed the SEGA VR system - separate of the success of the amusement projects investment in VR. Also we need to be careful of quote some of the sources - a lot of the SEGA magazines were clearly Advertorial engines, and the rumors of how much was actually playable and what was the actual quality of the SEGA VR prototypes (if at all representative of the final system) has been a question many have dodged.
Remember, some previous SEGA execs tried to claim they pulled the SEGA VR because of health concerns, just to avoid answering the question of how much of the hardware was hype, and what it could achieve. The reality was the promise of the hardware was vaporware, and the performance was poor, and the claims to meet the low bar of the 90's could not be achieved.
I wrote a number of articles calling out the difference from the successful Virtuality and VR-1 systems supported by SEGA, and the failure to supply specs or reality from SEGA VR - a hyperbole train we see today!
Still this was a well produced feature - thank you.
nice vid! I totally forgot that Sega was advertising the Sega VR before. I saw some ads on gaming mags but I didn't know what happened to it. Keep up the good work!
+George Watanabe Thanks man. Obviously they couldn't release it but I give them credit for trying something so ambitious.
Is like when you discover the force and you see it all arround you, sorrounding all living things...
+Thunder Kat lol
I still have GamePro magazines somewhere that had ads and articles about the Sega VR. I was so excited for it to come out!