The Story of Virtuality | Nostalgia Nerd
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- Опубликовано: 18 окт 2024
- Ever since I laid eyes on these wondrous cyberpunk like machines in the 90s, I was captivated. Huge pod like booths, connected to massive, bright headsets seemed like the future; Virtual Reality seemed like the future. In a way it was, because W Industries and Virtuality created something pretty staggering for the 90s. Here was VR which worked, it was immersive and even better, it was affordable, meaning arcades, leisure centres and theme parks were quick to get their own pods installed. So join me on a personal quest of enthralment, as I look at the company and machines behind the original Virtual Reality boom of the 1990s.
Useful links;
Octav1us' RUclips: nnerd.es/Octav1us
Retro Computer Museum Leicester: nnerd.es/RCM
Simon's Retro VR Page: nnerd.es/RetroVR
Virtuosity Systems: virtuositytech....
Virtuality: nnerd.es/Virtu...
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♜Resources♜
Many thanks to Simon Marston for providing a huge swathe of resources and archive information, as well as providing access to his incredible Virtuality systems.
Further information: www.retro-vr.co.uk
Zero Hour Footage: • Zero Hour (Virtuality ...
Sega's Collab: segaretro.org/...
Specs: www.arcadianvr...
VR Numbers: web.archive.or...
2000 specs: wiki.skullspace...
Jagcube: jagcube.atari.o...
News article: www.cbronline....
VR Timeline: www.pebblestud...
Elysium: www.cbronline....
Insights: kernelmag.dail...
Historical account of Virtuality: vrtifacts.com/w...
Kotaku account: kotaku.com/the...
Story outline: www.vrs.org.uk...
VR User Discussion: forums.oculusv...
If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything in this video, please let me know, so I can add the source in. It takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.
I worked on and with both the standup and sit down Virtuality VR systems from 91-93! I worked for Edison Brothers in their entertainment division called Exhilarama. I literally spent days and weeks playing, using and doing minor repairs of these machines. I had the high score on kills in 3 minutes on Dactyl Nightmare! What a blast from the past!! THANK YOU FOR THIS VIDEO!!! Edit: we had a fully functional version of Legend Quest that was installed but wasn’t available to the general public to play. I got to spend hours playing that one as well!
I remember like a biplane or plane shooting one. Was cool
I remember playing it at Great America 6 flags.
Me and and bunch of college buddies headed down to the local mall to play Dactyl Nightmare the minute it showed up. Man what a rush. It was funny to watch people from the outside of the circle cage crouching and hiding behind nothing.
Did you expect VR to get to the point it has today or did you think we'd be way further ahead than we currently are now?
@@ADreamingTraveler I don’t know if you’ll get a response from him. Last I heard, he got sucked into modern VR and hasn’t emerged since. Rest assured he’s bagging all the high scores wherever he is.
man as a modern VR user i'm so happy for the work these people did back in the day
Straight up they deserve our respect, they've earned it.
They worked hard so we could play scary VR games, but when you piss yourself in VR you piss yourself FOR REAL!
The sacrifices they have made for furries on VRChat
@@andrewigley3931 first time I tried that out, very first 'room' I entered I saw two _characters_ in suspicious positions and performing _suspicious_ actions...
I heard the girl say "i thought the people who done this stuff were weird, I don't know how I feel, I'm wondering who am I, I feel like I don't even know myself"
I am paraphrasing, but I swear she said something similar meaning to this, and, she sounded YOUNG. I mean early teens young.
The guy? He sounded older, like 20s to mid 20s older. I said to him "wtf is this, you degenerate, tf are you doing" and he replied "when was the last time you spoke to a girl" yeh fr, I said "well, prob a few months ago.... but this isn't real" I didn't get the chance to finish my reply before he thought he had one over me and says "yeah, exactly" and I assume he blocked or muted me...
What that girl said though, that has stuck with me, I really believe that weirdo took advantage of her and she felt somewhat _used_
@@matthewlane518 lmfao!
This is a very high quality episode. It looks and feels less like a RUclips video, and more like a produced documentary.
I’ve been making Uk tv shows for the past 20 years, and I know how effort goes into crafting something like this.
Good work, and looking forward to watching more,
Nick
Thanks very much Nick!
@@whoeusbsknsi stop being a weird dick
@@whoeusbsknsi what a little baby you are. You know there's a certain age you're supposed to be to create a RUclips account right? You are well under that age clearly.
@@whoeusbsknsi what the hell is your problem asshole?
Hi Pete, itz me Rachel
This was my very first VR experience around 1992. It was life changing. Then nothing for decades until oculus came around.
Me too! Got to play Dactyl Nightmare at Epcot Center over 3 decades ago. Wild.
I remember I tried it once at a mall. It was an airplane game. It took me a second to realize you could just look to the side. You could look all around and the image would change like you were there. It wasn't just a tv screen strapped to your face.
@@benjamink7105 I was playing in that airplane game, as far as I remember the goal was to land on a carrier ship in the ocean. It was incredible. There was also a space game, but the airplane simulator was the most impressive by far.
Disney had some cool VR attractions at DisneyQuest in Orlando. A comics based one where you swung a lightsabre at enemies while in a fast moving vehicle and an Aladdin themed magic carpet ride. Another one I liked (that didn’t use the helmet) was a Pirates of the Caribbean attraction where you ride a boat shooting cannons and you are almost completely surrounded by screen. But my FAVORITE attraction was where you and three friends pilot a giant mechanical spider to rescue colonists on an alien world. So incredible!
It's interesting how the Virtuality proves that even with the most primitive, low-resolution graphics, if you have accurate enough head tracking, and an at least okayish FPS, you can give a compelling VR experience.
I have seen a medical video with patients who had fear of hights. They used car for that. The grafic was like dos aera and it totally worked in showing the fear.
@@Nordlicht05 I can also confirm this still works. Played Batman Arkham VR and at the scene where Batman interrogates the Penguin on top of a skyscraper I was shouting "BATMAN YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOT WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?! WHAT PART OF YOU THOUGHT PERCHING ON A ROOFTOP WAS A GOOD IDEA?!". But yeah, the 3D effect with adequate depth can make you feel very high up. I don't doubt that even with flat shaded simple shapes people would feel like they're standing on a building block hundreds or even thousands of feet off the ground.
VR today STILL has the same big issues, mainstream developers are largely ignoring it due to a small user base, the small user base is slow to expand due to a lack of high quality content from developers . In addition people still get sick, and the tether is hard to eliminate etc. The graphics have had very little to do with the the success or failure of VR, VR is the future and it always will be:P
@@Battleneter only a select number of people get sick and even then it goes away after awhile.
@@rorschach5510 That's not true as per thousands of forum threads. Many people never get their VR legs.
I'm honored to be a part of this episode!
Polygon nightmare is my love contribution to a near lifelong dream of VR. I put 4 years of dev work into it. I had no experience of developing before i started out, painstakingly to map out the only demo video i could find on youtube from that time (present in other part of this video). You made my day with this masterpiece of nostalgia and new footage of "the real deal" from the retro computer museum. Best regards / Fredrik Enmark, Dev. Polygon Nightmare.
ruclips.net/video/HsTF-OWezPw/видео.html 😅
Amazing work! I played Dactyl Nightmare back in 1992 at the Picadilly Circus arcade in London... The Virtuality rigs were in the middle of a huge room on the first floor if I'm not mistaken. I was so inspired! 12 years old! I traveled back to London several summers in a row, and this was a highlight of my stays there. I died instantly when I played, but that did not matter. Decades later, I have worked in VR and AR for several years, living the dream :)
Thank you for your contribution 👍🏽
will polygon nightmare be available on steam as well?
@@mano123456 Me and two colleagues spent a lot of money on the Virtuality machines at that arcade, it was the Trocadero. They had Total Destruction then Exorex on 4 networked cabinets in the basement, Flying Aces and Dactyl Nightmare on the 1st Floor.We played a hell of a lot of Exorex and Total Destruction.
Firstly it was great having you visit us at the Retro Computer Museum. Loving the detail in your videos, incredible how much information you managed to find.
My First VR experience back in 1998 at Disney Quest in Walt Disney World. They had Aladdins Magic Carpet Ride and Ride the Comix that both used very large VR helmets suspended from the ceiling! Similar graphic detail to the Virtuality machines
Jawolf can’t wait to visit and check them out myself.
There was an episode of Bad Influence where they visted Disney, and looked at the tech behind the magic carpet thing.
I think it was Violet Berlin who did that bit, or it might have been Z Wright? I can't find the clip atm, but I'm sure it's out there.
I experienced VR at Disney Quest in 2002. The graphics where very very dated back then. The headsets were very heavy as well, I had to use my hands to turn my head side-to-side.
Think I'll have to plan on making a visit at some point probably will plan to stop by for a visit on the way back from my Dad's some time can kill two birds with one stone and save on overpriced rail fares making a detour from Derby heh.
Are you still running? I hope covid hasn't stop the museum from existing :(
The "Sword of Damocles" is an interesting name for a VR headset. It makes it sound like a wonderful experience that can go horribly, fatally awry at any moment if you know the story.
It was just named so because of the way it dangles over the user's head. Nothing particularly deep.
It’s also a great Trivium song.
@@singleproppilot I don’t think ITCOTD was even out when I left this comment, but agreed.
Not sure how this one slipped through 🤔. Great upload matey 👊🏻😁
Instablaster
Wasn't expecting my favorite Australian forge god here. Cheers
i remember as a kid going to electronic universe and trying on ahead seat and playing mech warrior for the first time it was horrible and weighted a ton i wanted some so bad but at a grand price tag it was too rich for me
I played Dactyl nightmare when I was a kid and was blown away. I'm so happy the VR future is finally here!
Same! It blew me away as a kid... I was like looking at the future in the eye.
I played it at an amusement park when I was a kid. My best friend and I were gamers and played against each other. It was a blast even if the graphics we're worse than what we were playing at the time
Me too. My first experience with VR was playing Dactyl nightmare and I was hooked. Now I have a PSVR and an Oculus Rift and am so thankful that the technology has advanced to the point that I can now have my own VR system at home.
@@Mikey48ish I'm floored that I can carry my quest in my laptop bag and use it anywhere.
its a shame the company died just as the 3d accelerated revolution was beginning in the pc world.
MonochromeWench if they had stuck around a *bit* longer VR arcades could be more of a commodity. And since they’re arcade cabinets and you’re not buying them yourself they could’ve created even more cutting edge stuff.
It's not really a shame. "If only we had better field of view... If only we had higher resolution... If only we had better frame rate... If only we had 3-D positional audio... If only we had faster refresh rates... If only we had detailed shaders... If only we had greater polygon counts..." Twenty years later, with all of those things fully realized, the consensus remains that this shit sucks!
VR where you stick a thing on to cover your eyes/face has always been and will always be garbage. It's only fun for about 15 minutes before you want to rip the fucking thing off. Everybody wants the holodeck from TNG, and anything less than a convincing version of that will always be a failure.
@@djhenyo how's it feel being so wrong guy?
@@0Asterite0 Sorry you bought the thousand-dollar Vive, Oculus, or other VR helmet.
@@djhenyo What makes you say that? There are loads of great VR titles to play and experiences out there. Google Earth in VR is an amazing way to explore the globe digitally.
I miss the 80s and 90s, it was such an exciting time with new extraordinary innovations that blew our minds.
Likewise, which is why I've really been enjoying being a part of early VR. In the 4 or so years that modern VR has been around, we've gone from a low-res headset that's intended to be used with a standard controller while sitting down, to a low-res headset designed to track the movements of your body and hands, to much higher res headset with a wider FOV and controllers that can track each of your fingers. It's pretty wild.
As if new and exciting stuff isn't happening right now? It's hard to see while you are in the present but exciting shit is happening all the time, far more than ever before and it will keep getting faster and faster. Progression is a snowball affect.
And it isn't now? Tell me, how many VR HMDs are on sale today?????? I love the 80s and 90s too, it's not like they were exclusive for the reasons you point out.
- VR is getting really good, high resolution displays combined with eye tracking is going to give us near realistic animation soon.
- Hand tracking is getting actually usable without any extra hardware too.
- speech recognition is actually usable now without extra training to adapt to the speaker. (it would be practically perfect with some speaker specific training, but that is too expensive to do in most cases)
- Game NPCs are going to use GPT like neural networks to communicate as soon as it becomes computationally realistic. If you have played with A.I. Dungeon on Dragon model, you know that GPT-3 is _seriously_ smart, able to converse about practically any topic and roleplay as a character, its only practical weak point is that it cannot really make up coherent stories. But for NPCs in a game that is okay, the story is already written after all. The nice thing is about GPT like text generators is that they can be programmed with simple text input. Basically you write instructions (like context and backstory) in human language to customize the NPC, it takes relatively little effort to make a custom prompt for the neural net, and you have a NPC with a unique character.
Exactly...I haven't seen anything new or special in 20 years.
I can’t believe I didn’t realize this was a 45 minute video. I thought it was like 15 minutes. I wanted more. It would be nice to continue with a part 2 and show the time line all the way up to present day with the valve index, oculus rift s and quest and the psvr
Back in the 90s i actually got to play one of those early MONSTER VR headsets and actually played that "Dactyl Nightmare" game. Just having to be put inside that circular ring thing and then having this massive headset with all it's wires and cables coming off it put on your head, really made you FEEL like it was the future.
"Yes, i believe we're in need of a wizard"
Proceeds to make a thief character.
Anyway, amazing tech for the time.
Pedro Boh and a 6 foot dwarf character wizard as shown. Lol
Thief is a mathomancer. He makes your stuff get subtracted and his multiplied.
Because: she's a troll.
@@Just-in-Spenc vyvhcdug
Ooooooo yesss, keep going baby.
"Do you remember when 3D hit the theaters" will get a definite yes from everyone. Since that particular event has happened at least once for every single generation after the war :-)
What
Pretty much.
50's
70's
80's
00's
the 2020's will do the same thing.
Thank you for pointing that out. It really annoys me that the top comment here isn't one complaining about his embarrassing error claiming that 3D Cinema started in the 80s. All he had to do was Google it... SMH
I remember, back in the 1980s, when the BBC aired a specially adapted black and white movie that you could watch in virtual3d with the special glasses from inside the Radio Times. They had yellow and blue lenses. Not the standard red and blue.
@@KaiserMattTygore927 have people really forgotten Avatar and all those gimmick movies from the 10's? I mean, Avatar sucked... but it was so recent🤔
Great, great, great, job! I love when you make long form docs and this one didn't disappoint.
Isn't this the WWG himself
Many thanks dude.
12:50 This was technically the first VR let's play ever recorded.
"When VR was 20 frames per a second"
VRChat players: That sounds awesome
as a vr chat player i can confirm that 13 fps is impressive
Tbh i never dropped below 90 fps in VRChat.
@@JanJanJanJanJanJanJanJanJan2 most people including me who have played or play vr chat last time I checked had entry level equipment, with most playing on desktop. Those that had vr a lot of the time had the bare minimum of what was needed which is what I basically had. There was of course the select few that had full body and pretty much ace gaming pcs. You need a good pc, even though vrchat in itself is a pretty low quality game when it comes to graphics, because no one ever optimizes their avatars when creating them in unity/blender. I learned this the hard way when I made an avatar, installed a bunch of hair physics and clothing physics, and realized that when looking into the mirror my fps tanked. I fixed it, but most people either dont have the know how or are to lazy to do so themselves. Edit: it's hilarious though because I play skyrimvr with 60+ mods, 4k textures, and a decent enb. And its runs 10x smoother than vrchat ever does.
My first time with vr was at an arcade. It was a blast! Will never forget it.
@@HaplessOne even back when i had my 1070ti i had zero issues. The 2080ti doesn't even spin up the fans in VRChat.
Congratulations! Another masterpiece of the history of technology that, even in the age of overinformation, is being lost.
I couldn't watch after he said that 3D was introduced in the 80's 🙄
Cool trip down memory lane. Really well presented mate, thanks for the awesome vid.
Read and green glasses for 3d was done in the 1950's, if not before. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was done this way. That was 1954.
This video makes it clear that the word "internaut" is long overdue for a comeback!
Correct. I completely agree!
Small bit of trivia: its always been used in Romania, it never died here.
MoonlightEmbrace Same in Lithuania, it's still relatively popular
Same in France
And virtuality
The Legend Quest show for Tomorrow's World was filmed in Hickory in Nottingham.
I helped film this, they got four of us to go around the dungeon, they asked for different parts to be filmed separately, it took about two hours.
They then got the presenter to film later the same day and we stayed while he was there in case they needed more footage.
I remember the presenter fell over the cables after he left the booth, he had a strope afterwards, their cameraman said he was a Pratt.
When playing the game you had a USB type key which you paid for, this had your character on it so you could come back each week, I still have mine.
I had forgotten about the shop this was at, funny looking back.
Cheers for the footage.
This is some great content. I admit I was unaware that VR was so functional in the 90's. It's really impressive what Virtuality pulled off with the technology at hand, and that they were able to stay afloat and even flourish, if only for a time, with a cutting-edge tech offering.
VR in the 90s: _The Lawnmower Man._ When Nintendo released _Star Fox_ ( _Starwing_ ), I thought for sure the two would be combined for the most exciting gaming experience.
Star fox vr in the 90s sounds like the most vomit inducing thing ever. Imagine the motion sickness
@@bt3743 Do a barrel roll! dies
Why starfox? It wasn't the first 3d game, there were many before it, there were even 3d polygonal games on consoles before it
@@fandangobrandango7864: Timing-because of WHEN the two products were available. Nintendo wowed audiences with Mode 7 on the SNES, and _Star Fox_ was meant to showcase it. I had played earlier polygon MS-DOS games, but they don't even come close to the same experience. An earlier dedicated machine might manage it, but it wouldn't be affordable for average consumer before the 1990s.
"When internauts are online, what's their favorite activity?" Shitposting, Carl. It's shitposting.
....and declaring that other internauts are literal Nazis.
@@_Piers_ gotta stick it to those huwite supremazists right?
Mopantsu As a white person, white supremacy is the biggest danger facing our modern world. My rabbi agrees.
no lads, you have it wrong.
PORN and anime girls
@@tHeWasTeDYouTh thats what I was about to say but you beat me by a week, fuck
As an Amiga nerd back in the day I was quite pleased with the fact the local Virtuality systems were powered by the Amiga 3000. I don't remember playing anything other than (Terror) Dactyl Nightmare though, and only ever saw the stand-up unit.
I remember when VR was roughly 1 frame per second or less. It was called a viewmaster. You had to pull the lever to move to the next frame.
oh you poor poor man you must have wished you could die from such low frame rate
Lol!
Those VR machines are forever imprinted into my memories. I remember seeing the standup ones at a local theatre and being amazed. Saw a huge room full of the sit down and standup ones later when visiting Chicago as a kid where I also saw the infamous Battletech battle pods. I was was fortunate as a child to take a behind the scenes look at Aladdin VR at Disney when we were invited by employees to a demonstration. That era was fascinating and made me forever hope for a VR future.
I was the gatekeeper of the boxing version of a Virtuality machine when I lived and worked over in Jersey in 94. It was housed in Forte Regent. I was nowhere near as big a gamer as I am today but I still liked games and was awaiting the release of the PS1 with anticipation. It's quite telling then that even though I could have as many goes as I wished during quiet times I only played it twice. They were pretty underwhelming if you ask me.
I still remember the pain in the neck... due to the HEAVY weight of those VR headsets...!
At least they improved the weight and the resolution. Now .. I keep thinking VR is more a "gadget"... right now !
TheFrenchy82 My poor little 11 year old head could not handle the weight and it constantly tilted on the side. How far we’ve come.
@@LetsTakeWalk lol
I'd love to find an old non-working stand-up Virtuality machine and put modern components inside it. Valve Index, VR treadmill, etc.
Although room scale seems to be king nowadays, compared to treadmills.
treadmill seems to be the much better option, it's just it's more expensive and would have to be repaired every so often.
Such an informative episode! I still own an Amiga 3000 and 4000 that I picked up free in 2001 from a local science museum that previously used them to run some of these early VR systems in the 90s. They had lots of weird capture boards installed with jumper wires going directly to solder points on the motherboards.
I still remember when VR was an insane fantasy of the future back when the Rift DK1 was made sometime 2013. I thought to myself "Wow, VR will really be something we genuinely could use in the future." Of course by 'future' I meant maybe within the next 20 to 50 years, not just 5 years time. Now with products like the Valve Index with it's advanced controllers or the Oculus Quest being a completely standalone headset, I really feel like I'm living in the future. Now, I have no clue what the next 20 to 50 years could really hold.
Ay-Leck Aguirre in 20 or 50 years, we’ll have something like ready player one where it’s a full body and mind immersion with suits that tap into our nerve system so we can feel what goes on in the vr
@@peterc3619 Only if we can annoy Elon enough to work on Neuralink faster
Just Ghostie right?🤦🏻♂️
More powerful stand alone HMDs, better haptics. Lol
Great video ! About the idea of mixing a real character in a 3D environment, I've done something similar for an industrial client that wanted their employees to train on physical model, but immersed in a 3D reconstruction of their real-life working environment. This was needed because their employees had very short time to do their work and they had to train just in time before doing it for real. I used a HTC Vive VR headset and mounted on it a webcam and use a green background to manage the superimposition of the model and the real hands of the employee inside the 3D virtual world. I also added some sounds recorded in their real workplace and added the possibility for an external person to talk directly in the audio helmet to the employee. That was a very interesting project. We called this concept Augmented Virtuality.
Amazing
This was an amazing episode. This took me back to the early 90's when VR was seen a lot on TV. Programs that you featured in this video used either used VR or promoted it in some. Shows like Gamesmaster, Knightmare, Bad Influence and such.
I remember I was only about 6 maybe 7 when I first seen VR and I had no clue what the term VR or even Virtual Reality stood for or meant. All I could remember was seeing those Virtuality headsets on Gamesmaster and thinking about how cool they looked. But as fast as they seemed to be gaining attention they were dead and seemed to fade into obscurity.
This was a great trip down memory lane for me thanks for this amazing look at history.
That red dwarf episode is amazing 😅 love your video btw. The quality is fantastic ❤️
I was about to make a comment asking where Cyberzone with Craig Charles was. And there it is. A wonderful strange example of mad 90s game show that I remember vividly.
I gotta say I am beyond impressed with what they were able to accomplish in this realm of technology back then.
They had two of these at Tower Park in Bournemouth in 91/92. They were in the bowling alley though not the underfloor arcade.
I remember it being about £2 and bloody jerky. A biplane game I think...
Keep up the good work fella!
I played Zone Hunter in an arcade back then. Really amazing stuff. Years later I was able buy a VFX1 headset but never got it to work properly. Still have all the hardware though.
I really hope someone releases Zone Hunter for the Oculus Rift. Then I can finally play the game a bit longer than 5 minutes...
The most interesting thing is how even back then they understood intimately that latency was _the_ thing that made VR bearable.
Latency is much harder to tackle than graphical quality. You cannot just throw computing resources at the problem, you have to design smart.
Wireless communication makes it even worse. But you can cheat with it a little, for example the image is interpolated according to the head movements on the head set. So the latency of the reaction to head movements is _less_ than the wireless link. This means that a wireless VR headset should have some rendering capability. This actually helped the Oculus Quest to become a wireless PC VR headset, because originally it was designed as a standalone with lots of computing resources locally.
That’s not really hard to figure out….first person who got motion sickness would of figured it.
@@nomaschalupas2453 lmao
TBF, that's how presence works. You need extremely low latecny and high framerate in order to trick your brain into thinking the virtual world is real.
The movie theater that I worked at in the 90's had this, was amazing to me when I first tried it.
I was a UI designer for a VR company in the 90's that made software to allow complex CAD models to be viewed and edited collaboratively using these kind of VR headsets, as well as CAVEs and desktop workstations. It ran on SGI, HP and Sun kit, and was bought and used by the likes of Ford, Airbus and Harley-Davidson. They were acquired by one of the big CAD companies a few years later (which is when I was laid off, unfortunately) and are still working out of the same office in Bristol.
That's incredible!
Very well done! That was a PBS quality documentary. This is definitely one of the best retro-gaming channels on RUclips.
It was also nice to see Octav1ous make a cameo! You guys are such perfect couple. Was that your little'n watching you play the old VR game? That's really sweet. I wish you folks all the best. And keep up the great work, both of you!👍👍
After trying one of these in the early 90's i looked forward to what it would become, didn't realize i would have to wait over quarter of a century to try it again.
This was a very informative and well researched video. I enjoyed watching it.
They had haptic feedback gloves with individual finger tracking back in 90s and we had to wait till 2019 to get Valve Index
Yeah I was pretty baffled by the haptic gloves as well. Like I know companies that are working on the same air bubble finger tracked gloves today, but why they aren't already available is ludicrous.. the 90s must have been the future lol
Pretty insane how advanced Virtuality's stuff was, considering the tech they had on their hands.
I love VR, thanks for showing some of the really old systems, I remember seeing some on TV as a kid but didn't remember the show names. Also, "Tostesterone"? XD 26:44
Fantastic work, thorough, well researched and entertaining.
More like this please!
I can't wait for Octavius' take on all this. Thanks for the capture of history and to the museum for the preservation.
I was following along with the story until I heard her cackling in the set. Now all I wanna hear is her take :D
at 01:13 I immediately i recognised the official "messiest hairdo on youtube" TM, I knew there's gonna be an Octavius video as well :)
@Gareth Fairclough You forgot "Gubbins, gubbins, gubbins. Gubbins gubbins. Gubbins, gubbins and gubbins. Gub-gub-guuubins gubbins gubbins gubbins gubbins gubbins GUBBINS!" At which point she will switch to talking about the glorious INNER gubbins.
i watched this episode on my rift as a mark of vr respect. I also typed this comment on a vr keyboard 8)
Epic.
>typing on a vr keyboard.....
that must have been a pain in the ass to do...
@@second2050 Actually it was a piece of cake. Oculus have done good work on the virtual keyboard. It's basically like typing with two fingers. Although I do wonder what typing with the knuckles controller from the index is like 8)
@@th3d3wd3r oculus keyboard is pretty good i found it natural tge first time i used it even beatsabres keyboard is nice to use.
And i’m having a virtual shit... isn’t technology great?
I really appreciate all of the effort you put into this video. Thank you for making it! 😍
This was really cool. I remember actually using these in a fair back in the day. It was my first experience with VR and it blew my young mind.
Quality video, as always mate. I love the longer docos you produce. They are incredibly easy to watch.
Yeah, I like the way the videos aren't just pieces of stock video with talking over the top, in that rambling "must keep talking or the viewers turn off" style that RUclips is a bit full of. It's like watching an actual TV program. Very nice :)
I played that first VR shooter on a San Francisco pier back in 1994/5... man good times.
That could only have been the Pier 39 mega arcade... sadly no more.
I was just gonna say how I tried out one of those VR headsets at a local computer history museum, but it turns out that's where you went XD. Great place, plenty of classic machines, I've got to go there again
Thank you so much for this great documentary. I remember playing Exorex in the mid 90's in a local games arcade in the UK. It was the seated Virtuality experience, which emulated the classic physical Mech controller scheme of a joystick/HOTAS one for each hand. It was great fun but often all to brief an experience and a bit expensive for me to play much at the time. Don't remember the frame rate being much of a problem, though it did amuse me to watch other people playing who never moved their head at all - I don't think they really understood the concept of VR ;)
I saw the yellow one in London as a kid. Can’t wait for PSVR2 next week!!!
This episode has excellent production quality, also very informative. Good work guys.
Whoa this episode from the Nostalgia Nerd was virtually amazing
But how close is it to *virtuality?* 😜
Tried it at CES London in early 90’s, was a memorable experience shooting an enemy on a bridge above me. Looking up 🤪
Loved the Better than Life clip from Red Dwarf!
Fantastic documentary, thank you for collecting all those scraps of footage and info in one place - I got here trying to find out what was "Plague" using in the 1995 film "Hackers"...
I am now even more impressed with what could be achieved with Amiga 30 years ago - tried my daughter's Oculus and thought: "this is not a biggie these days, with this msi hairdryer-of-a-laptop of hers...but these were machines with 1000x less memory and cycles! Hats off.
BTW: Wish you captured the games in a SBS format, so we could enjoy the actual 3D experience! :-)
After watching this, for some reason, I feel the need to watch the old Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy TV series :)
@DED DOA You got that feeling as well?
Glad I wasn't the only one... :)
24:30 How she managed to resist typing, YES PLEASE in the Sex box, I'll never know!!
@Pusalieth or because she is not American.
@@HAWXLEADER Lemme just google the guy who wrote that joke..."Myers was born in Scarborough, Ontario, on May 25, 1963, the son of an English couple from the Old Swan area of Liverpool." Oof. Maybe don't be so insecure about whatever country you come from, it's not a good look.
@@MrCorrectify Who wrote what joke? The form field answering one? well it seems fit, because the US residents use the word gender instead so they wouldn't be able to make it.
I'm from Israel being insecure is a second nature haha not really though, I just like to personally laugh at american culture.
@@MrCorrectify Flawless victory.
I’m going to be super petty here but wasn’t the Power Glove from Mattel, not Nintendo :p
Technically not even Mattel. Someone else did a video on the history of the Power Glove and it was infact from an early VR data glove company. VR hadn't really started yet so they needed a way to sell their product so they made a cheaper and simplified VR glove for the NES. The PROBLEM was more that you're trying to shoehorn VR glove compatibility onto games that were never built for it. I'd love to know how well Glove Ball worked as I think it was the only game truly MADE for the Power Glove.
Regardless, I do remember a lot of people hacking Power Gloves and using them as cheap VR input devices back in the early 90s. That was a thing. I remember I had a book called "Virtual Reality Madness and More" which came with two CD ROMs full of VR crap and many of the programs on there supported the Power Glove.
Pew pew. I digitized you both with my Nintendo zapper I stole from my brother's duck hunt game. Shiny metal armor on handsome guys forever. Go Captain Power!
In fairness this was only released as a Nintendo only compatible device... and it looked comically bad even back then!
I remember the whole VR craze in the early 90s. It was everywhere and we even had a Virtual Reality cafe here in Germany by the mid 90s. Sadly i could never experience it myself and only had to enjoy what was shown on TV and you could only IMAGINE and dream about actually experiencing it yourself. To be honest.. i'd still love to experience this early 90s Virtual Reality.
Oh man, this takes me back. I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare 2 way back when in a mall or something. I had a blast with it and couldn't believe something like it was possible at the time. Thanks for the nostalgia trip. :)
You implied cinema 3D with the Red and blue lens glasses (aka 3D Anaglyph glasses) was a thing started in the 80s but actually it predates the 80s by many decades. Basically, it was invented (at least the cinema version) in the 1950s as a gimmick, one of many intended to counteract the loss of ticket sales due to the growing TV market in the 1950s (another one was the switch to widescreen movies and the introduction of stereo sound). Their were two types of 3D that was popular in the 1st phase of 3D. The first was a polarization method similar to modern polarized 3D but using two film projectors and cardboard polarized glasses the second was the red and blue glasses method, or Anaglyph method, as its technically known as. This grew to dominate the 3D film market up through the 80s as it only requires a single normal projector and cheap cardboard red-blue lens glasses. It’s not the best method but was seen as good enough and cheap.
The second phase of 3D in the 70s used the Anaglyph method exclusively. This was when adult films (at least in American) employed this method on a few films as a gimmick. In the 80s, a number of horror films used the Anaglyph method, for the third phase.
The 3rd was the 80s uses of Anaglyph 3D largely in horror films like Jaws 3D Amitityville 3D.
The 4Th phase happened in the film based 3D IMAX theaters and interactive motion theaters in amusement parks using special electronic shutter glasses (Disneyland’s Caption EO 3D film starring MJ used electronic shutter glasses. The 5th and current phase went back to mostly polarized glasses but with digital projection. There is also the “Dolby 3D” method I have not personally experienced that uses dichroic filters instead. It has the benefit of being able to be shown in standard movie/cinema screens vs RealD, the most popular digital polarization method, which requires special screens. It is however more expensive and the Dolby 3D glasses are more fragile.
Oh, I almost forgot one other method whose name escapes me that has been used a few times with some TV shows in the US in the 90s (maybe elsewhere too?) that works using glasses with one lenses somewhat darker then the only. It only works with certain kinds of moving images but it’s main advantage is that the image looks normal when viewed by those without the proper 3D glasses. You can kind of get a similar effect by looking at a 2D TV image using red-blue 3D glasses and you’ll see a sort of 3D image, though not as good as a polarized 3D image. There have also been experiments with lenticular 3D in TVS but due to angle of viewing issues that have not caught on despite the benefit of not requiring glasses to view. I expect hologram 3D to be the true 7th and next phase of 3D.
80s movies like Jaws 3d, Friday 13th Part 3, Adventures in the forbidden zone etc all used polarised glasses, not the red/blue anaglyph stated in the movie. I actually still have a pair of cardboard glasses somewhere that I kept when I watched Jaws 3D! Interesting feature here: www.pocket-lint.com/tv/news/98279-the-history-of-3d-cinema
Great video, thanks. The CRT filter is a bit annoying though.
It’s indeed annoying such crt filters should be banned as you wouldn’t take benefit from the finer detail capable lcd screens.
Your not wrong there, it makes my eye's go all googly (that's the precise medical term, GOOGLY)!!!
So much this. The clips shown are already grainy, no need to make them unwatchable.
I imagine it is of a lot of help to prevent copyright strikes from the automagic youtube bots
kuro68000 I love them and they help a lot with masking the awful quality of the VHS rips most of this old footage only exists as, but I wish the scanlines lines up properly as they simply just don’t for a lot of this episode. Some of them line up perfectly and it’s so annoying because that proves it could be done right, but for most of the video it just isn’t.
Looking forward to watching this... I remember this company seemed so exciting at the time..
I also remember trying it at the Trocadero in London... and it was a bit of a let down...
But is was the only real consumer vr at the time..
Gonna watch now,
Nick
I felt like a bit of a numpti trying to play Dactyl Nightmare in front of hundreds.
Nearly got to meet Julian Rignall though! He looked awkward and had a gathering of children around him. Was it about 1994?
Edit: I didn't live in London at the time, Tocadero was the arcade? The time I tried it was at a trade convention, (like a CES) me and a friend went with our dads as they got invites, there were loads of kids and teenagers there though... and Rignall.
Ahhh, Trocadero. What a place, what a time. I agree, I was more disappointed in the 90s than I am today.
@@Nostalgianerd My disappointment trying Virtuality was partially based on the fact someone had expelled their rectal miasma into the space prior.
@@eustacequinlank7418 Someone farted so hard, in an open air environment, that it didn't clear out in time for your turn? That's hardcore...
@@TheBrokenLife Some people just part a cheek slightly and the room suffers.
Brings back memories of Lister earing out the groinal attachment on Red Dwarf
The advert with Peter Jones at the end was the cherry on the cake, I've been listening to a lot of Hitchhiker's Guide recently. When the world returns to normal I'll have to visit the RCM if it's still there.
Anyone remember the 32-bit Nintendo Virtual Boy in '95? When I had a go on my mate's one, it absolutely did my head in, an aweful experience... still legandary though, lol. I've had a couple of headsets myself since, VR has come on a long way and is only going to get better. I can't wait until they're basically contact lenses.
Dude would we even be alive for contact lenses vr o.o
@@Sarahm2261 Dude, there are people alive today who remember a world without computers and digital devices............ wake up, lol
@@Nemoticon so the tech will advance that fast in 100 years? That was just the question sorry if I offend you
@@Sarahm2261 Less than... easy.
25:22 that kid in the background takes lounging to a whole other level.
As a Kid i sat in a "Venturer S2" in Sinsheim , Germany at around 1996 or 1997 :) That was my first Virtual Reality Experience. Weird thing is that there is not a lot of Information on those Machines at all..
Amazing video. I was more taken aback by the use of compressed air haptics in this than anything else, I can't believe they had that then and we are still working with it now. Crazy. Imagine all the Quest whiners if that was the headset weight hahaha.
Watching this while I wait for PSVR 2 to drop in one week. How far we've come.
Did you meet the Games Master while within virtual space, and does he still look like Patrick Moore?
That Atari Research logo is the primordial skadaddle skadoodle...
I've been watching tons-absolute tons-of VR content on RUclips. And I guess the algorithm decided this would be a good video to suggest, because it's been pretty persistent in suggesting it, despite the fact that this video was published over a year ago, and it doesn't usually give as much weight to older stuff. It was right in this case though, I quite enjoyed seeing how VR technology started out.
Now though, a lot of people are making new memories involving VR, which they're sure to be nostalgic about years later. I think VR is really taking off strong now. Especially with all the advancements in technology and affordability lately. I've even heard that there's a new type of super high pixel density screen being worked on, that they think will actually be cheap to manufacture, which should eliminate the screen door effect.
But what good is affordable VR equipment without awesome software to play around with which supports it, or even pushes the boundaries of what VR can do? Well… That's being worked on as well. I'm sure a lot of people who are familiar with common VR apps are familiar with VRChat. And that's an okay thing to play around in I guess. But they haven't been pushing forward as they should have. Luckily, someone else has been pushing VR forward in the software department!…
You see, there's this App called "Neos VR" on steam, which is also free, and sustained by donations from Patreon. The reason I bring this program up, is because while it may look like VRChat at first glance, the resemblance is only superficial. It's being actively developed, and from what I've heard, will likely never stop being developed unless tragedy strikes. The state of Neos VR is already so far past VRChat, that they're practically different genres of game. Because while you can do everything in Neos VR that you can do in VRChat, the reverse isn't true. Let me explain…
Neos VR allows you to edit the world around you. And by that I mean, it lets you do this while still in the game. You can import 3D models, textures, avatars, and other things from inside a 3D world, without needing to go through other programs such as Unity, first. You can edit the things you import, in real time. Not every kind of editing is available yet, but more is planned, and what you can do already is amazing. You can use combine imported textures, like an RGB component, UV maps, height maps, etc. into a material, with configuration options available to tweak it the way you want it. You can select an material, either one you made, one someone else made, or one that it already applied to an object, and just point at something you want to look like that and make it so.
You have tools available to create logical interactions between things. These, they call logix. It's basically scripting, and has been used to create some really impressive things. You can add snapping to objects and avatars, with fine control over the particulars, which allows things like clothing and accessories to be placed on a player. It's also been employed by people, to the floors of structures to allow furniture, walls, appliances, etc. to quickly and accurately be placed or rearranged. It's even been employed to create modular avatar body parts, which will just snap into place on a bare bones skeleton. And there's sure to be more things yet to be discovered.
Neos VR doesn't stop you from exporting things you've created either. You can export things as easily as import them. Which makes me excited for when they add more functionality for editing. You can do a lot already, but editing 3D content is a very complicated task, which is reflected by the intimidatingly complicated UI of professional 3D modeling applications such as Blender, Maya, and Unity.
Neos VR even has support for some types of face tracking, including eyes, mouth, tongue, cheeks, pupil dilation, and others I can't remember. The data from these things can be applied to things in the virtual world, like obviously you're avatar, but likely more unexpected things. Props you can might snap to your avatar for one example.
Another cool thing I like about Neos VR, is that when you join a world, it places you there near instantly, and just loads bits of the scenery in around you, which was a design decision to allow users to talk with people despite how a slower internet connection may have otherwise kept them in a loading screen for minutes, like with other games. It's also been reported as being less jarring to load a world like this.
Yet another cool thing, is the ability to spawn a video player window in the world, and paste a RUclips link, which will play that video, along with volume control and video seeking/scrubbing sliders. I imagine this would be very useful if you want to look up a video tutorial on how to do something in Neos VR, without tabbing out of the program to watch it. Though it's also certainly a nice way to listen to music in there too.
Another advantage Neos VR has, is that it has a system for dynamic bones (jiggle physics) built in, which you don't have to pay to use, like you would in VRChat. And like everything else in Neos, it's highly configurable.
I'm also rather impressed by the controls for the in-world camera. My favorite feature is the ability to set a target, such as a user, and have the camera follow them automatically. Although I'll admit I don't know or likely remember all the cool things the camera can do. And there are probably a ton of innovations waiting to be made, because you can attach the camera to objects like anything else.
The developers of Neos VR seem to like the theme of user configurability, because there's even been a recent UI overhaul which has made some, maybe all, of the UI menus rearrangeable. I'm not aware of how many of the menus can be changed around, but I did see a demonstration of the world search menu having this feature. There were comments about how users would be able to create entire themes for menus as well, but I don't know what the timeframe for that is.
One of the best features of Neos VR though, is the friendly community! (Not technically a feature, but it's still part of the experience.) It's very common for users to be able to ask for help with something, and actually receive it. There are apparently even staff members that can be found in various worlds, often helping someone.
Can you tell I'm excited about this? Well, I am! I think people will look back at this time, and talk about how Neos VR was the start of a new era for VR.
Too cheesy? Sorry… ;)
I got to play Virtuality's Terradactyl FPS shooter back in 1993. I was set up at the local college student union with two player stations. Being an Amiga owner, I heard about these systems in Amiga magazines and was especially interested to play it.
When my turn came up, the headset was heavy and cumbersome, but it didn't matter. After I spotted the fellow player, I snuck up behind him and waited. He was on a platform which I followed him on to, and he was yelling out to me that he can't see me anywhere.
Everyone was watching the gameplay on monitors and they were screaming with laughter as my opponent slowly turned to my gun waiting for his face to show.
It was the best, and I was so juiced about the future and getting VR games at home. It's crazy that it took as long as it did, but I still have yet to buy a headset. I've only done the crappy VRidge/RiftCat phone thingy, but don't have the proper hand tools.
I'd love a Steam Index, but that is pricey and requires a better GPU (which is impossible to buy), and wanted an Oculus before Facebook made it spyware. Just waiting on the sweet mid-tier headset to finally jump back in decades later!
I remember having a go on the Virtuality unit at Alton Towers in 1994, I remember being totally amazed. I never understood why nothing seemed to publicly happen with it for 20+ years!
I saw one of these in an arcade when I was on holiday once, but they wanted a fiver for it as I recall, and I only had a bag full of 10p coins to play the machines, not a fiver's worth. Never saw one in the flesh again.
I remember my first and last experience with Virtuality. They'd setup a special demonstration at the mall. After waiting an hour in line it was finally my turn and after paying 5 dollars, they stuck the helmet on my head and without any instruction stuck my into a sit down flight sim that reminded me of Red Barron on PC. Disoriented and barely knowing what the game was, I died within seconds and was pulled from the machine and the helmet taken off and nudged on my way. To say the least, I wasn't impressed. I didn't see the machines since until images started showing up online.
You didn't miss much, I played one of these at Epcot, and instead of some overly complicated game I didn't understand, I played some kind of egg hunting thing. Except I spent the entire time I was in there trying to work out how to move and look around. The low refresh rate, high latency, and inability to see the controller at all made it very difficult to do much of anything and I mostly remember just being disappointed. Wolfenstein 3D on the home PC was more immersive, really.
That's pretty much identical to my experience with Virtuality, plus I remember the Red Baron type game being very laggy and making me feel nauseous :) 1993 in London.
exactly the same experience for me in 95 or so in a small town in Argentina. except it wasn't crowded but I was scammed $5 as well for a few seconds of flight sim.
Watching the attendant lock people into a MASSIVE headset is hilarious when I think about the fact that I have a quest in my laptop bag.
In another 10 years we'll find the bulk of our current headsets hilarious once again.
As an Amiga owner in the 90s, I remember seeing videos of Dactyl Nightmare running on Amiga hardware, and I even got to play Exorex at the Exhilarama in Cary, NC. It was an amazing experience at the time.
As a 14 yr old I was lucky enough to play Virtuality's Boxing Game. 28 years on, I even remember the music! Anyway, what struck me most was how wherever you moved your head you could see different things. I was blown away that if you looked up you could see lights on the ceiling of the Boxing Arena!
It was a mistake to use the amiga hardware, the 3000's 68030 cpu had to do most of the rendering pipeline in software... Considering the high cost of these machines, they should have gone with SGI systems to have proper hardware accelerated, texture mapped and shaded/lit polygons with much higher polycount, and games written using the opengl toolkit instead of a custom engine, so developers could focus more of their time on design and gameplay...
A higher framerate would also have made the incidence of motion sickness lower, which was a common issue for many users with these first gen VR sets...
@@blitzwing1 Hahahahahahahaha!!!, LOL "the baby eating bishop of bath and wells" ;) that's from the blackadder character right ??? "such corrupt and foul-mouthed perversity... have you ever considered a carreer in the church???" ;) lol
Such awesome memories !!! ;)
Yeah, i do think it would have bumped up their budget quite a bit, but then again, around that time-period, SGI was selling Indigo workstation for quite acceptable prices, and while they did'nt support hardware texture mapping, it did have a properly shaded & lit pipeline and it would have blown the amiga hardware out of the water with probably a ten-fold increase in polygon density and a much needed increase in frames/sec rendered, for what I would think would be 3x to 5x the cost of the customized amiga solution with the 2 framebuffers they went with in the end... might seem like a lot but i think the actual computer system's cost was minor compared to all the custom tech that made the whole system work (visor, head-tracking, etc...) so a 3x to 5x more expensive computer system would have made the whole system's cost increase only marginally, like 110% or 120%.. if anyone knows all the figures, correct me pls !, this is all sheer speculation ;).
Regarding texture mapping, only SGI's onyx/challenge systems released at the same time supported HW texture mapping, so yeah, that would have been prohibitively expensive... but not impossible...
Also, i'm fairly sure if they had approached SGI during the development phase, they could have built a custom hardware platform or solution for this purpose that was much more affordable... SGI was trying hard to expand into these markets during the end of the 90's and early / mid 90s...
You do know Amiga’s were only a fraction of the cost of SGI machines? They had to sell these things you know!
The Amiga A3000 was fine, Multi-tasking OS, multimedia orientated chipset, consumer prices. 3D games everywhere were jerky at the time, even the arcades. It was accepted and their initial success shows it just needed building on. What is actually frustrating is not long after Amiga was working on a custom 3D chipset with HP RISC processor for release at the consumer market (64bit games console etc) with PS1 3D power about a year before that launched. But sadly the parent company tanked and the evil investors asset stripped Amiga and disbanded the development team.
@@suburbia2050 considering the fact that you could get an SGI indigo workstation for 3-4x the cost of an fully speced amiga 3000 at the same time, which had a hardware geometry engine, 24bit hardware z-buffer and a CPU with more than 5x the floating point power than an amiga 3000 (even with the faster 68882 FPU), I still think they should have gone with an SGI machine to drive these machines. Sure, it's more expensive, but given the fact that they were the heart of a specialized arcade attraction like this, I still think the higher cost would have turned these attractions into a much more enjoyable experience, and they could have sold more in the end...
Also considering the fact that the OpenGL pipeline on Irix offered a massive reduction in development time and much more 3D features for real-time 3D graphics, the cost of development alone would have saved them a lot of money in the end...
The A3000 had to do everything in software on it's slow 68030 and 68882 CPU/FPU... It really was the worst system for this use...
@@HPPalmtopTube Games development? The Amiga had a massive developer base in the UK. I am sure there were reasons for choosing it!
The height of VR in media for me was when the trailer for Disclosure came out. I nearly wet my pants in the theater in the virtual scenes. Also. I was working IN the building which they used for the exterior of his work place and not only did I see the filming in the street scene from a hallway window down below. A few days later I went up to Volunteer Park and found the area outside the conservatory being set up for a scene which turned out to be filmed at night. I didn't know the two event were connected or what movie it was for but it slammed home when I saw the film itself. The only unrealistic part was the premise that access to private office files from the company network from within the demo was even possible, but I let that slide due to the wonderful imagineering and artwork used in the VR portions of the film which went beyond anything I'd ever seen. PS. I did experience Dactyl Nightmare with a friend once when it came out. I was never aware of these game show format advertisements (reviews) which were shown in the documentary.
They should remake that shooting game for modern hardware, same art style, sounds, etc, but on newer hardware
Ah you meant the other one
If you are referring to dactyl nightmare, one already exists
@@ninjacat230 woah thats really cool
Great mini VR documentary, and awesome job capturing the video. Never knew about these units, but they are 90s as heck.
I loved this! One thing I didn’t see was in the states in the late 90s we had these giant arcade cabinets with a giant yellow pull down headset that had motion tracking but they weren’t nearly as good as these machines.
I sincerely hope your lady friend in the video is in a better place. Can't help but notice the scars on her arm which I can only guess are from self harm. Hope she is happy now.
Essence of music
Turning into something MORE
Your subtitles are precious af
(Suitably 90s Music)
Didn’t Next-Gen magazine cover a Mechwarrior VR game that used an Amiga 500 motherboard as its main processing unit? I still recall the article, game and Amiga hardware used, but I am not 100% positive about the magazine that covered it. Hmmm.. on second thought, maybe it was either Amiga Format or CU Amiga who did the coverage.
I remember my first ‘virtual reality’ experience as a kid, it was this strangle rollercoaster machine. You’d get inside, be strapped in safely, and then they’d close the doors. It was essentially a cart that was bolted to the floor, but would shake you about. It didn’t use VR headsets though, but rather a small television which displayed to the viewer a rollercoaster cart moving through space as the cart shook. And since you had literal rollercoaster bars and were cut off from the outside world, I remember being astounded as a kid- it felt so real to me.
This was at some massive science museum in my state, and I loved going to this museum just for this ‘ride’.
I had a very similar experience; however, it was a flight simulator. The whole thing would lift up, tilt, yaw, pitch, all that. Pretty cool stuff. You could go completely upside down
That very hitchhiker's guide bit at the end was amazing