Does Anyone Remember More Realistic Virtual Reality Machines 1998-Onward?

[oldgamerz]

I wanted to leave this post in mavelvscapcom2's Virtual Boy thread but I thought it might change the topic in which brings you this one.

Have you ever played actual virtual reality with the mid to late 1990's version of modern graphics or played any modern virtual reality?

Some time in the late 1990's my dad took me to a popular amusement park in Ohio, It started to rain when nightfall hit, and then we entered one of the buildings and they had some kind of virtual reality setup, with some different kind of Duke Nukem 3D game. the Virtual Reality setup. included more then just a headset and controller, it also had a platform that you stood on than when you crouched down physically you crouched in the game itself. It was cool, and the screen was in color, and had the same graphics as they had on PC and 5th generation consoles back in the late to mid 1990's

This thing was hard to play and when the game ended an we stopped playing. I wanted to see more of this thing. not to mention, it was also 2 player and included 2 TV monitors of exactly what each player was playing and how they were doing for people who didn't have a headset on.

This was at an amusement park called Cedar Point, Can anyone remember this machine? or something else like it. It was almost like a tread mill but it was just a platform that you could duck onto and duck also in the game itself

[bikingjahuty]

I remember by local Dave and Busters had a VR machine in the late 90s, although I never got around to using it. I can't imagine it would have been better than VR today, but who knows.

[rayne315]

when I was young my mom took me to work with here and the company she worked for had a type of virtual reality. they had a harvester/tractor cab set up to a gyro of some sort that shook it and tv screens for all the windows (some of those old first gen flatscreens that weighed hundreds of pounds) and the controls (steering wheel, pedals, and all switches) were all set up for a program that let you "Farm". it was really cool for the time but one of those things that that was ALL it was for. one of those product demonstration type things.

[Flashback2012]

When you mentioned amusement park in Ohio I thought you might have been referring to Time Out on the Court in Forest Park, OH. It was kind of a mini amusement center that had kiddie rides, bumper cars, and a Ferris wheel all situated inside a mall (which is now mostly dead except for Kohl's as the last anchor and a lone retro game store/arcade in the center).

Anyway, back in it's heyday, besides the stuff mentioned above there was also an arcade, a laser tag arena, and an area devoted to VR machines. They were the Virtuality machines that ran the game Dactyl Nightmare and there were also sit down VR units as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L60wgPuuDpE

I couldn't find any videos for the sit-down version but this is the game that was running in the stand up units. It was by far the more popular of the two that was offered though it used to get super annoying when people would get in and not listen to the instructions. Had plenty of drunks try to play (there was a Buffalo Wild Wings across the hall) and it was fun to mess with them. I would strap these yahoos in and when they would not listen to me, I would hit a button on the keyboard that perpetually had the pterodactyl go after them. 

The other reason I thought it might have been this location was because at one point we had a LAN set up for 8 computers called Wired4Play. Like I said, it was 8 computers networked together to play games like Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D, and Rise of the Triad. A lot of us who worked that booth were computer nerds so we were adding custom .WADs to the Doom II game where the Imps would sound like Beavis and Butthead among other things. 

 

[oldgamerz]

PARTUAL QUOTE FROM @Flashback2012

When you mentioned amusement park in Ohio I thought you might have been referring to Time Out on the Court in Forest Park, OH. It was kind of a mini amusement center that had kiddie rides, bumper cars, and a Ferris wheel all situated inside a mall (which is now mostly dead except for Kohl's as the last anchor and a lone retro game store/arcade in the center).

Anyway, back in it's heyday, besides the stuff mentioned above there was also an arcade, a laser tag arena, and an area devoted to VR machines. They were the Virtuality machines that ran the game Dactyl Nightmare and there were also sit down VR units as well.

The amusement park I remembered the VR was either Geauga Lake or Ceder Point. My dad and me liked to go on the intense rides, my dad actually taught me to not fear the big time rides years earlier. when I went to both ride parks in one weekend we hit at least most of the intense rides at Ceder Point including "The Raptor" " The Mean Streak", The Old Blue, The Demon Drop, and many other rides but mostly Roller Coasters.

But I won't go back because ever since I turned 16 I no longer can stomach any kind of rides anymore, all they do is make me sick now