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sayitaintjonas
Up and Coming
April 26, 2013

3D Arcade Emulation

I know everyone has their own ideas for what VR can do....so here's another :)

After reading Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, I got excited about the idea of walking around a virtual arcade and stepping up to play a game. I've spent a lot of time fixing playing arcade cabinets, building arcade sticks for consoles, and configuring emulators such as Hyperspin. There are already a lot of very determined enthusiasts who have compiled arcade cabinet sideart, bezels, and control panel artwork along with preview videos.

What if all that could be combined with an existing emulator such as Mame so that you could enter an arcade, walk past the games, select one, then use your own arcade stick to play the game?

I'm just getting started with Unity, as I'm primarily a UI designer, and I think I might be able to put together the arcade simulation, but building Oculus support into an existing emulator and/or porting that emulator into Unity is beyond me.

Just Added* https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/7h1tobo06xsi41p/ArcadeDemo.zip?token_hash=AAEi54McDLUD3lBwpSL_Zqosy_rvs_53YX-9E-w5fGk2lw&dl=1

What do you guys think?

    15 replies

    Show previous replies
    freshflesh1
    Participant
    May 15, 2013
    Just downloading the demo now. I've been using 3DArcade for years now, it was a little obsession of mine, since my teenage years were in the 80s.

    At present I'm reading Ready Player One and was checking google to see if anyone was doing anything about converting 3DArcade to the Rift. That's when I come across this thread.

    As well as the arcade models in 3DArcade, I found these http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?clid=4ac3dc12784cb20bd06e6be4f8954ac. So hopefully they can be some use.

    I guy called RetroRalph attempted to go one step further and created a 3D emulater, not to be confused with a frontend. This is called RetroCopy. Although it seems developement is at a stand still as present. His website is here http://www.retrocopy.com/. Make sure you check out all the videos on YouTube also.

    I have zero programming skills, but if you need any help on your project that just needs time and not programming skills, let me know, as I have a great passion for 80s arcade, I even have a Operation Wolf cab in my garage :shock:

    Edit: Just tried the demo and it's really impressive. I really do hope you carry on with the project.
    BigDaddy
    Participant
    May 18, 2013
    lets make it even more realistic, for us teenagers of the 70s and 80s , on the east coast our default "arcade" was the local 7-11.

    So how about a 1981 7-11 with a few machines jammed in the corner, with neighborhood kids all crowded around em. Now that would be freaky and cool.

    Dont forget to have the 7-11 owner in there who glares over at you from time to time.
    Peejle
    Up and Coming
    May 19, 2013
    "BigDaddy" wrote:
    lets make it even more realistic, for us teenagers of the 70s and 80s , on the east coast our default "arcade" was the local 7-11


    Mine was a local mom and pop pizza takeout place. The games that stick out for me are Mr. Do's Wild Ride and a decathlon type one where you could use a pencil to 'teeter totter' between the two buttons to run faster.
    Oh and TRON and Donkey Kong Jr. tabletop and...
    You get the picture.

    Peejle
    Anonymous
    September 26, 2013
    I just had the same idea and saw you are already working on it. Did you make any progress since the last version you posted here?
    Orbitoid
    New Participant
    November 17, 2013
    I have been super interested in doing something like this also. Really glad to see someone else has been thinking about this too. :D
    I have been doing some looking around tonight and I found this:
    https://github.com/steeve/dwmaxx2
    Here are some videos linking to what it can do:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpvh16VjrRE&feature=youtu.be
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQWErKtfpq4&feature=youtu.be
    It looks like it should be able to grab the output of an emulator and put the output onto the surface of another object in another program. That should mean that you could get some emulator that uses directx and have it's output displayed on a 3d object (ie the screen of an arcade cabinet) in a 3d environment.
    I'm not an amazing programmer but I will be looking into this later on to see if it is possible for me to hack something together.
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