It’s a PlayStation — for Your Face
It only looks ridiculous on the outside.
January 18, 2013 - 7:30 am
So this is a real thing demoed this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the giant annual event in Las Vegas company in their rights minds would ever send me to in person.
It’s called Oculus Rift, and it’s the video game console you strap on your face. With a big HDMI cable or something coming out of the top of it. It’s been a big success with Silicon Valley-type Kickstarter investors — but something tells me they’re a lot more likely to strap game consoles to their heads than most other people.
On the other hand, the opportunity to play your favorite first-person shooter or fantasy adventure game in a totally immersive environment…
…would you do it?
The Oculus Rift is NOT a videogame console. It’s a peripheral for PC and for future consoles.
Nintendo made something like this. It was called Virtual Boy. You may have remembered it but Nintendo would rather you forget it. You see, Virtual Boy was a massive failure. The idea of crouching on your knees to stick your eyes into what was essentially a pair of binoculars that played games that looked like the very old Star Wars arcade simulators didn’t fly too well with people.
While the device above gets rid of the crouching and the games probably look better than a green colored Star Wars simulator, the idea of sticking things to your eyes and blocking not only your peripheral vision but everything from the outside world still will not fly. This is where going through Kickstarter is poor substitute for having entrepreneurs beg for money from venture capitalists. Those rubes who gave money to this Kickstarter project will never see any positive return on their investment.
Maybe Kickstarter should start thinking like venture capitalists and weed out projects that have no chance in hell of making money.
If you look closely, you’ll see I dug up an old Virtual Boy picture to illustrate this post on the PJ Lifestyle main page.
I’m at work and my work’s anti-surfing protocols blocks some pictures but not others.
[i]the idea of sticking things to your eyes and blocking not only your peripheral vision but everything from the outside world still will not fly. [/i]
Maybe not this product, but a helmet with a display that wraps all the way around, and responds to your head movements (i.e., you notice something on the left periphery and swivel your head left, and the display reacts) would be popular. The ultimate in escapism.
The military is trying to develop that kind of helmet for the F-35. The goal is to create something far more effective than the conventional heads up display. The goal isn’t virtual reality but augmented reality. When the pilot moves his head, the display adjusts the display. There are sensors all over the plane and this effectively allows the pilot to see through his plane, even his own body. No more blind spots!
Only, developing the helmet is proving harder (and more expensive) than thought.
Doesn’t it always?
It looks a bit too front heavy for me. Plus I do like to be able to have some peripheral vision. Not because I’m paranoid or anything — why are you asking?
Got a demo of a device like this that worked w/ my company’s 3D software. took a little bit to get used to but the ability to just move my head around to look around the Doom level being demo-ed… It was a real improvement to controlling the FPS character in the game.
As for wearing something like that? The hard-core gamers won’t have any problems w/ it.