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Sega VR Revived: Emulating an Unreleased Genesis Accessory
- 101008 6y agoOne of the most interesting articles I've read on Hacker News lately. I think it is well written because someone like me with zero experience developing videogames or even VR software was able to follow most of it (or at least I think I followed it :-) ) It is incredible the amount of stuff he had to solve to be able to work at the end. I think that if it were me, I would have finished the project happily after I surpassed the first obstacle, calling it a day. Kudos to everyone involved on this, really nice write up!
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoIs it just me or did the website designer go WAY overboard on the banner size and it’s practically unreadable on mobile in horizontal?... Why do people do this? Do they not care? Edit: lolokhn https://i.ibb.co/9VcJtCn/00-ACECC5-A03-F-4988-8286-99-E7650-B2560.jpg https://i.ibb.co/9VcJtCn/00-ACECC5-A03-F-4988-8286-99-E7650-...
- Kuinox 6y agoIt distract me reading the text, on PC.
- striking 6y agoTry https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/ https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/.
- Kuinox 6y agoNah, simply created a uBlock rules, took few seconds.
- JxLS-cpgbe0 6y agoI have a global custom stylesheet with #header, #site-header, #footer etc hidden by default. 99% of sites are improved.
- Kuinox 6y agoI don't think that modifying that much the website will improve my productivity. I do use a lot of uBlock list that remove annoyance, but made some important content disapear sometimes...
- dang 6y ago"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- JxLS-cpgbe0 6y agoIf you really want to rage try it on a phone in landscape. A logo and a hamburger icon...and it's half the screen!
- chc 6y agoThey probably don't care, since you can just rotate your phone 90°.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agowptr++; /* Skip number of sprites in frame */ wptr++; /* Skip hotspot offset */ wptr++; wptr++; >Those last 2 pointer increments are skipping over data that goes completely unused, and it seems that at some point the data was removed from the ANM2FPA.EXE output. Yea... I wouldn’t have found that so easily I don’t think. I don’t just increment pointers like that, and trying to determine intent of someone else’s code where there are just two random increments... this guy must be a lot sharper than me!
- bluesign 6y agoHe has the source code, I guess these comments are from original source code.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y agoOh I get that. My comment was still how easily this could be missed even with source. Maybe it’s just me, but I rarely use ptr++ to jump over like that. I’m more likely to use ptr[1] that isn’t “destructive” to the location you started with.
- cirno 6y agoIt saves you needing a separate index variable. If you're doing something like LZSS decompression it makes the relative window offsets natural (absolute). Not sure I'd recommend coding like that today, unless ptr was a smart pointer that had bounds checking, but for the time period it was a perfectly fine technique.
- tom_ 6y agoBut the destructive nature of ++wptr or whatever can be to its advantage, in that you never need to update any numbers when things change. The data is consumed/produced in the order specified, a property that is maintained even after new operations are inserted or existing operations are reordered. (Whether you want this or not, who can say! - though I claim you typically do.)
- mrguyorama 6y agoI really want to see someone do something similar: Allow you to view emulated VirtualBoy games in a VR headset so you can experience the actual 3D effects
- modeless 6y agohttps://github.com/braindx/vbjin-ovr https://github.com/braindx/vbjin-ovr
- mikepurvis 6y agoOr for another option, Virtual Boy emulated on a 3DS: https://github.com/mrdanielps/r3Ddragon https://github.com/mrdanielps/r3Ddragon Note also that you can use the 3DS emulator Citra with a head-mounted VR display, and apparently it's pretty great: https://www.reddit.com/r/Citra/comments/c20fu7/citra_in_vr_is_actually_amazing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Citra/comments/c20fu7/citra_in_vr_i... So for maximum nesting doll fun, it's likely you could run the Virtual Boy emulator under Citra, and view it all on your VR headset.
- wk_end 6y agoSadly r3Ddragon looks quite dead (no updates in five years) and isn't very far along (commercial games don't run properly, speed is often lacking).
- kevinmmccormick 6y agoThis works flawlessly on the Oculus Go and the Oculus Quest: https://sidequestvr.com/app/125 https://sidequestvr.com/app/125
- krm01 6y agoReally fascinating. Along with Nintendo's failed attempt at VR, I'm starting to think if VR is really ever going to take off? It seems history is repeating itself. We all get excited about VR, but it keeps failing to go beyond being a fun gadget. A nice to have. Any thoughts on this?
- JansjoFromIkea 6y agoThe accessibility of Oculus Quest really seems to have pushed it forward a lot. I suspect the low price of v2 will result in a double impact between new people buying it and another group entirely buying the old Quest used (I got one for just under half its retail price recently, mindblowing you can get that kind of tech that cheaply now)
- azinman2 6y agoProbably some niche markets worth capturing, but we’ve yet to see a killer use case. Maybe one exists, but it’s hard to suggest that strapping a screen to your face is something that everyone will want to use every day. I liken it to a roller coaster: they’re really fun, but also really intense, so I don’t want to go on one very often.
- danbolt 6y agoI'm quite bearish on VR as a mass-market product, and to get my point across I usually replace the term "virtual reality" with "Nintendo 3DS strapped to your face". I think you've kind of touched on my point well.
- azinman2 6y agoRather than just downvoting me for an informed opinion, reply and let me know why you disagree. So far the evidence (sales, years on market) is on my side.
- doomlaser 6y agoIt needs a Pokemon Go. I just got a Quest 2. $299, Apple quality. Works by itself or can plug in to a PC and be powered by its GPU and CPU. It's waiting for new experiences with mass appeal. Valve gave a Half Life incarnation.. it's waiting for the right new content. For creators, there's already amazing stuff like Tilt Brush. Part of the issue is that VR is great with super high resolution displays and 120Hz low latency simulation response. The hardware is still catching up to the dream, but it's a lot closer. It reminds me of the dream of the 1984 Macintosh or the NeXT cube, or the 1993 Newton. Software graphics rasterization on 8 MHz 68k / 20mhz ARM cpus.
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- crazygringo 6y agoThis is insane, I had no idea Sega almost launched a VR headset in 1993... and for $200?! I'm not surprised it didn't work out, but I never imagined we had the tech even for low-resolution tiny color LCD screens back then, or the "intertial measurement unit". I mean, I lived through those years and now I kind of have to retroactively alter what I thought was possible...
- J5892 6y agoThe Game Gear came out in 1990 (in Japan). I assume they used similar screens for the headset. The tracking is what surprised me the most. Watching the trade show videos in the article, it's amazing how good it was with what was likely just an accelerometer.
- gorkish 6y agoAccelerometer is wishful thinking. The consumer headset I had back in that era used a couple of potentiometers on the sides. A stick ran through them and clipped onto your shirt at the shoulder. Turning your head left and right rotated them in phase (yaw) our out of phase (tilt)
- spicybright 6y agoWow, that is super interesting honestly. I'm sure that was cheap as dirt to make, and reactive enough to pull off the effect. But still awkward as anything I'd imagine. Almost reminds me of the Data Glove, the prototype idea for the power glove controller for the NES, using fingers and tilt sensors as button inputs to the console. The idea was prototyped in a few days by an engineer by attaching drinkings straws from your wrist to the end of your finger, shining a light on one end, and having a photo resistor to read it on the other end to see how far you've bent a finger. Super cheap low latency finger movement detection. It was later replaced with fiber optics for reliability sake.
- RealityVoid 6y agoI wonder what sort of IMU could that have been? Back then MEMS was not a thing, so how did that work? I am puzzled how they managed to target 200$
- SubiculumCode 6y agoI mean Sega Master System had those cool 3D glasses with a missile defense type 3D game.
- ElHacker 6y agoThis is amazing! Can't believe Sega had a VR Headset in 1993 and for only $200, it's a bit sad they couldn't get it out there. I believe VR is coming very close to going main stream, probably in less than 5 years from now. Oculus Quest 2 is IMO by far the best overall VR device ever, and things will only improve from here. That's why I've recently made a career change to work full time on VR application development, I truly think this is the next big computing platform.
- BorisTheBrave 6y agoSurprised to discover that the Ono-Sendai of Neuromancer fame was an actual cyberspace company.
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- kilroy123 6y agoI've always been so fascinated with products like this which are way before their time. A VR headset in 1993 for $200 USD!? Other similar products include: Apple Newton, Microsoft SPOT Watch, General Motors EV1, Kodak digital camera, etc. My question is, which products are out right now, which are way too head of their time?
- Jarolis 6y agoI feel like there's a lot of astroturfing going on here. There are good VR headsets that are made by companies far less evil and destructive than Facebook.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoGreat invention referenced: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5526022A/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US5526022A/en