I'll share a childhood story as well.

Somewhere between '93 and '95 my father took me abroad to Germany and we visited a gaming venue. It was packed with typical arcade machines, games where you sit in a cart holding a pistol and you shoot things on the screen while cart was moving all over the place simulating bumpy ride, etc.

But the highlight was a full 3D experience shooter. You got yourself into a tiny ring, 3D headset and a single puck hold in hand. Rotate the puck and you move. Push the button and you shoot. Look around with your head. Most memorable part - you could duck to avoid shots! Game itself, as I remember it, was full wireframe, akin to Q3DM17 (the longest yard) minus jump pads, but the layout was kind of similar. Player was holding a dart gun - you had a single shot and you had to wait until the projectile decayed or connected with other player.

I'm not entirely sure if the game was multiplayer or not.

I often come back to that memory because shortly after within that time frame my father took me to a computer fair where I had the opportunity to play doom/hexen with VFX1 (or whatever it was called) and it was supposed to revolutionize the world the way AI is suppose to do it now.

Then there was a P5 glove with jaw dropping demo videos of endless possibilities of 3D modelling with your hands, navigating a mech like you were actually inside, etc.

It never came.

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somenameforme an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That sounds like you're describing dactyl nightmare. [1] I played a version where you were attacking pterodactyls instead of other players, but it was more or less identical. That experience is what led me to believe that VR would eventually take over. I still, more or less, believe it even though it's yet to happen.

I think the big barrier remains price and experiences that are focusing more on visual fidelity over gameplay. An even bigger problem with high end visual fidelity tends to result in motion sickness and other side effects in a substantial chunk of people. But I'm sticking to my guns there - one day VR will win.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBkP2to1P_c

	▲	zeroq 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It is precisely that! My version was wireframe and I can't recall the dragon, but everything else is exactly like I remembered it! For me this serves as an example. Few years later VFX1 was the hype, years later Occulus, etc. But 3D graphics in general - as seen in video games - are similar, minus recent lumen, it's still stuff from graphics gems from 80-90s, just on silicone. Same thing is happening now to some degree with AI.

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m463 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Maybe something like this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)

I think I played with the 1000CS or similar in a bar or arcade at some point in early 90's

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zeroq 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes!

The booth depicted on the 1000CS image looks exactly how I recall it, and the screenshot looks very similar to how I remember the game (minus dragon, and mine was fully wireframe), but the map layout looks very similar. It has this Q3DM17 vibe I was talking about.

Isn't this crazy, that we had this tech in ~'91 and it's still not just there yet?

On similar note - around that time, mid 90s, my father also took my to CEBIT. One building was almost fully occupied by Intel or IBM and they had different sections dedicated to all sorts of cool stuff. One of I won't forget was straight out of Minority Report, only many years earlier.

They had a whole section dedicated to showcasing a "smart watch". Imagine Casio G-Shock but with Linux. You could navigate options by twisting your wrist (up or down the menu) and you would press the screen or button to select an option.

They had different scenarios built in form of an amusement park - from restaurant where you would walk in with your watch - it would talk to the relay at the door and download menu for you just so you could twist your wrist to select your meal and order it without a human interaction and... leave without interaction as well, because the relay at the door would charge you based on your prior selection.

Or - and that was straight out of Minority Report - a scenario of an airport, where you would disembark at your location and walk past a big screen that would talk to your watch and display travel information for you, prompting question if you'd like to order a taxi to your destination, based on your data.

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m463 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I remember a guy I know went to japan/asia around 1985ish and came back with a watch. It had hands, but also a small LCD display. You could draw numbers on the face with your finger, like 6 then X then 3 then = and the LCD would show the values, and finally 18

This is completely uninteresting now, but this was 40 years ago

EDIT: I think Casio AT-552

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aQHnyZdgF4

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somenameforme an hour ago | parent [-]

It was a really interesting and weird time growing up when Japan was the king of tech. I had a friend who's dad was often over there and bringing all sorts of weird stuff back. There was this NES/Famicon game where you played with a sort of gyroscope. I have no idea how you were supposed to play the game, but found the gyroscope endlessly fascinating. Then of course there were the pirated cartridges with 100 in 1 type games. Oh then we found the box full of his dad's "special" games. Ah, good times.

	▲	vardump 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Special games? I thought NES was controlled by Nintendo?

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intrasight 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Isn't this crazy, that we had this tech in ~'91 and it's still not just there yet?

Not really, because feeding us ads and AI slop attracted all the talent.

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amypetrik8 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'll share a childhood story as well. I worked with a number of peer children with laudable parents. There was Jimmy, whose father ran a used car dealership and had a lot of sway, often threatening people with his father's ownership of that dealership. There was Steve, whose father gave him early access to a user-agent LLM known as "Microsoft Bob". There was Stephano who had SGI's 4D Chartreuse hardware, never publically released. Oh how they would brag and gloat, one up one another. Inevitably there would be a pause, and a lull, and they all would knowingly turn there heads to me -- "My dad.. My dad works for Nintendo". Oh the jealousy. I knew everything, seeing as my dad worked for Nintendo. The next President. Tomorrow's stock market prices. Whether next winter would be mild or severe. They looked to me. "Did you know I can play Donkey Kong - no - a new one with SGI rendered graphics by square". "Oh virtual reality - yea I have the successor to the game boy, it's virtual reality LOL good luck with the SGI crap". It was great. The one time in my life I felt seen, I felt valued. Truly a blessing. Currently my vocation is cleaning the leavings from proctoscopic examinations.