It worked fine it just cost around $30k. But the conclusion was inevitably the same, in that it wouldn't be a good idea to wear one for more than 30 mins or so.
Nope, not even the commercial level VR headsets back then are remotely comparable. They were still bulky and uncomfortable, had inferior tracking accuracy, poor latency, extremely low resolution and inadequate refresh rates. All added up to a pretty terrible user experience, though it was still cool for the novelty of it.
3D graphics back then weren't nearly as sophisticated either, so a lot of the things that work well in VR - like nice lighting, decent shadowing, respectable anti aliasing and all that stuff that really makes a difference - didn't exist.
Also, where did you get this idea that it's not a good idea to wear these headsets for more than 30 minutes? :/ People have already been using headsets that are worse than the consumer versions coming out for hours at a time.
I can't see 8 hour Fallout 4 sessions working very well. I would imagine it would become terribly uncomfortable.
Sure, you might not want to play in VR for EIGHT HOURS STRAIGHT. That is not a huge drawback.
The technology IMO needs to be in the monitor or screen. Not something you have to put on your eyes or head.
I really can see this going the same way as 3D because it relies on having to wear something. I could be wrong but even if I am I can pretty much guarantee that I won't be able to wear this as I am sensitive to light and motion and I get car sickness.
And that's a problem and always will be for technology like this. It needs to be something everybody can buy and use but it isn't. And 3D had similar caveats too and look where that is now.
There's no real way around needing to wear something for the foreseeable future if you want to do full immersive-level VR. There's no sort of technology anywhere on the horizon that can completely change your environment around you without putting something on.
Honestly man, 3D failed not because you had to wear something, but because the reward for doing so was minimal and the costs associated just weren't worth it. VR is very different. It is 100x more impressive and it *will* convince lots of people that wearing something to experience it is totally worth it. I think you'll find that the consumer headsets are a lot more comfortable than you think as well. I can see how just looking at them, they look awkward and cumbersome, but they are much lighter than they look and have a lot of effort put into them to make them as form fitting as possible in terms of adjustments and weight distribution and all that.
Honestly, the only people that compare VR to 3D are people who haven't tried it. You may try VR and still have other reservations and that's cool, but I've never seen somebody who has used a proper VR headset and made the 'but 3D failed' argument afterwards. Never.
