WEBVTT

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The '9s is back, baby. Time to grab some Crystal Pepsi on ice, toss a tray of

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bagel bites into the oven, and kick back and enjoy some cutting edge virtual

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reality. No, that that's not a joke. Consumer VR

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is yet another modern trend that owes its popularity, at least in part, to the

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'90s. It was in our arcades, our theme parks, our movies, TV shows. So, of

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course, it made its way into our video games. And okay, yeah, those of you old

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enough to remember Nintendo's Virtual Boy will probably say that that barely

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counts as VR. And Sega's offering only got as far as a demo at CES before Sega

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pulled the chute, claiming that it was too realistic for public consumption.

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But over on the PC side of things, we had numerous options for relatively

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affordable VR. Virtual IO's eyeglasses,

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Victor Max's Cybermax, and this, the

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VFX1 headgear from Forte, which came out

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disappointingly just 6 days after Christmas in 1994.

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Now, for a disappointing segue to our sponsor, War Thunder. Experience

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a detail-packed vehicle combat game with thousands of realistically modeled

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aircraft, helicopters, tanks, warships, and more. Jump in for free using our

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link in the video description.

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This old tower here runs Windows 95 like an absolute stud. But the thing is,

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we're not playing full tilt pinball here. So, we're going to bail on nice to

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haves like a graphical user interface and run our games a little closer to the

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metal using MS DOS 7. After navigating

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to the install directory, which delightfully I was still able to do

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somehow, uh, I just need to open up set VFX1.exe

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and oh wow, 3D graphics. I've been told

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that I'm going to stay seated for most of this demonstration because otherwise

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I might throw up on set.

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You can move the ear cups in to uh to have it put on easier. The visor

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obviously flips up and down. The IPD is adjustable just by moving the lenses in

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and out manually. >> And then you've got individual focus

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control as well. >> Wow, look at that. >> I did find to get the right focus, you

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did need to have the optics really close to your eye sockets.

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>> Dude, us '90s kids were so much harder. We didn't need like cloth or rubber

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gaskets on things that sat right next to our eyes. We liked hard plastic.

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>> So, you've got it in focus there. Yeah, I've even got a little bit of 3D effect.

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It seems like the screen is bulging out towards me, which was the fashion at the

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time. Conveniently, it doesn't seal very well. So, I can just see my keyboard

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under me. >> So, go to F3, which is test VFX1. And this is going to be the headset side.

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>> Oh, yeah. Look at that. With only a marginal delay.

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>> So, the next piece is the cyber puck. So, it just goes forward and back and

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then side to side. And then you've got three buttons that your fingers kind of

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align on there. >> Oh, there you go. >> Okay. So, it rotates and twists.

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>> Yes. >> But has no awareness of like a side to

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side or forward and back movement. Okay. >> So, it will only go to the 90°.

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>> Okay. Got it. It's all 90s all the time, baby. Time to play some Quake.

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>> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Oh, wow. This must have been a nightmare. It supports only specific

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updates for Quake. >> Yep. And depending on the application,

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support was either like an exe that kind

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of intercepts things and read as controls or as rudimentary as just a

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control map. If you want to click on single player and new game, this will

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drop you into the intro spot where you actually pick your difficulty by going

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through one of these hallways. So turning you tilt to the left.

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>> Whoa, there, Nelly. >> And then you can move forward and back

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by tilting forward and back. Your top button should be shoot.

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Your middle button should be change weapon. So you have a fire axe, I

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believe. And your bottom button will be jump.

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>> Picking normal may have been ambitious.

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>> The realism is too much. >> The reason it's so real is because Quake

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was one of the few games we found that actually has stereoscopic 3D. So, you

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should have the 3D effect there, >> dude. I do. It's I mean, it's not a lot,

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but Oh, what the hell did I walk on, >> Rottweiler?

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>> Oh, what the Oh, I didn't see it. >> Yeah, before this there was no jump.

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>> You couldn't jump and boom. >> There wasn't really any look up and down either.

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>> Oh, yeah. Let's go. >> That's something that you haven't tried

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yet. Try looking up and down. >> Looking

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buddy. Did I know Quake does that? Uh, normally

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that would be like page up and page down on your keyboard.

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>> Whoa, that is extremely nauseating.

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>> Thus the chair. >> Wow.

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>> Can you see any of the UI elements on the bottom there at all? >> Oh yeah. Yeah, I can see everything. 96

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100 39. >> Nice. >> There's a Minecraft creeper. Oh god.

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Looking up and down is like

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You know what? The gyro aiming is actually not awful. I must look like an

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idiot right now, though.

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This is This is very carpal tunnel inciting.

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>> Yeah. No, that was one of the things I noticed especially when I was testing

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things. Your wrist gets real.

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Sorry. Especially when you consider though like how small a typical screen

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was in these days. like this level of immersion.

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>> Oh, it was completely unheard of. A big TV was like 27 in.

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>> Yeah. How do my eyes look? Cuz they feel

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awful. >> And that was 5 minutes and 35 seconds.

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>> You know what though? Everything from the contrast of the displays to the

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immersiveness to the gyroscopic controls

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legitimately feels completely nextgen incredible technology

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compared to what I would have been playing, you know, with a mouse and

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keyboard on a tiny CRT. However, I get

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the feeling that I couldn't have afforded this. How much did this cost?

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MSRP was $6.95, >> which realistically is not that far off

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of what you'd pay for a cutting edge VR headset today. I'm surprised at how good

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the displays are more than anything else. >> Yeah. Can you think of any other small

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LCDs that would have been to that quality at that time? >> I don't think I even had ever seen an

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LCD at that time. >> They had them on laptops, but they

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weren't great. >> And almost nobody had those. And Oh, no.

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They sucked ass. >> Yeah, they were horrible. Honestly, it

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looks better than that. >> It's like playing an emulated SNES game.

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Sometimes it looks better on your CRT. >> Let's try another game, shall we? I hate

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that it looks so much better when I like really cram it into my eyeholes.

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>> So, this one doesn't have the stereoscopic 3D, so it will look flatter

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in the display. >> Yeah. >> In terms of the controls though, I

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actually felt that it moved a little bit nicer.

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>> How do I jump again? >> This one has no jump. >> Oh, no jump. Okay.

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>> So, this is on the Doom engine, which did not have jump. I'm right under the

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thing so go up. Yeah. >> Oh god.

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Uh oh god.

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Oh god. I'm like bouncing around.

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Okay. Whoa. That was very unpleasant.

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That might be enough of that one. What else we got? >> We've got one more game. We've got Descent, which is the most interesting

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from the perspective where you have all of the degrees of freedom.

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>> Okay. Oh man, I do not want to go back in here right now.

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>> Because of the limited controls that we have, uh, auto ship leveling is turned

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on, but if you whip back and forth too much, sometimes it will get disoriented

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again. >> Whoa. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. Oh my god.

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This is so disorienting. So pitch up and

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pitch down is pitch up and down. >> Yeah. >> Okay, I'm good so far. But then roll is

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yaw, >> which uh Okay. And then my head is just

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Oh, that's terrible. It moves the entire cockpit but doesn't move my aiming.

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>> Yeah. >> Uhhuh. Okay.

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>> This I just have my hand sit here.

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It's like It's like I'm holding it out for balance or something. This is so

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disorienting.

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And this is where the auto ship leveling kind of failed you. Uh, now you're up

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against a wall sideways.

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>> Okay. Boy, did we ever make a lot of progress in the last 30 years.

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>> Good job, hardware and software developers. Gee, I wonder why this

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didn't take off.

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Oh, and take off. It did not. We did

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manage to track down more than 110 games

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on its compatibility list, but only about half of them used the Cyberpuck

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controller and only a couple dozen supported proper stereoscopic video. The

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rest are just kind of flat but you know

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ambiganted screen mode. Theoretically, Forte's VR mouse could add support to

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any DOSs app with keyboard and mouse support, but that seems to have required

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a bunch of manual configuration to dial things in, and Lord knows these guys

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aren't going to pick up their support phone line these days. What we can do is

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take a closer look at the hardware, though. That was very unpleasant.

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We've already touched on the displays and lenses, but we haven't really taken

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a closer look at the audio or the plastic helmet itself. For starters, as

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large as it is, I'm kind of surprised it

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doesn't weigh more. It's pretty wearable, especially given that it has

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so many touch points around your head. Um, as for the headphones, what they

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lack in, you know, adjustments, they

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kind of make up for in having the world's groiniest cushions on them. And

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the foam is, I think, best described as

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improvised. >> Yeah, here you go. >> Oh, I see. They were improvised by us

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and this is the original. >> It's seen some better days.

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>> I don't know that they were that much better. This is pretty crappy. Oh god,

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now it's everywhere.

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>> One cool thing though is that this Velcro that we used to attach our

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makeshift foam was original. So, it was designed to remove and replace, maybe to

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maybe to wash it cuz they optimistically imagined you'd want to be in it for

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longer than 3 minutes at a time. At the bottom, we've got what appears to be a

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VGA connector, but when we open it up,

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we see actually that has a lot more than

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15 pins. So, this would have done display audio pass through for the puck

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controller, which uses what looks like an RJ45, oh no, RJ11

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connector. Good gravy. Uh, as well as

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data for the gyroscopes that were built into the headset itself. The coolest

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part though is actually in the tower. The VFX1 came with a proprietary ISA

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card, which is the predecessor to PCI, which is the predecessor to the very

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first generation of PCI Express, and we're on like what, five now for

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consumer platforms. It uses Oh, no way.

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It uses an FPGA. >> Yeah, >> I mean, yeah, that totally makes sense

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because of course it does. So that would be a big part of why this was so

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expensive. That right there is a programmable processor that would have

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allowed them to hit a sort of consumer price point with acceptable performance

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without being able to do the volumes to do a fully mass-produced ASIC. At the

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back, we've got their proprietary interface. Again, we've got an RG11 port

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for the Cyberpunk if we don't want to use the pass through. And then we've got

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audio loop ports, I guess you could describe them as, to go in and out of

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your sound card for the speakers and mic on the VFX1. The coolest part though is

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actually this interface back here. This

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is the 26 pin feature connector. And

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what it enables is direct communication between the VFX1's card and the VRAMm on

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our GPU at speeds that they say are up to five times faster than relying on the

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ISA bus. How do we not have cool stuff

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like this anymore? I mean, we do. Like Envy Link's pretty cool. It's just

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enterprise only. That is so sick. And

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this was a standard.

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I couldn't afford a good computer back when this was current. So, like I'd

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never seen this before. This interface wasn't just for RAM access. It could

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also carry color info and data and sadly went away as PCI and then AGP took over

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for GPUs. And also, GPUs just got a lot more integrated. It's amazing how many

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of the same brands are still kicking around today, though. There's some

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Samsung memory chips. SEC would love to

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see it. Speaking of brands that are still around, while Forte themselves is

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not, their assets were acquired by Interactive Imaging Systems, which in

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turn became Vusix. I actually sat next to the product manager for some of their

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headmounted displays back when I worked at NCX. So, yeah. So, they're kind of a

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competitor for like um XRE. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Crazy. On the one hand, the dream

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was there and was surprisingly well realized, but it's not a huge surprise

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given where the tech was that VR kind of fizzled out until the 2010s. Still, it's

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shocking to me though how similar this is in its overall form and function to a

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modern VR headset. And all of this was just oh, okay, 30 years ago. Oh, lordy.

00:14:37.199 --> 00:14:45.279
I need to sit down and recover from both realizing how old I am and realizing

00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:49.680
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