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How and when did you get into vr?

inovator2
Expert Protege

Maybe it just me but I think it would be interesting to hear about when you first thought about vr and how you got into it. For me it started around the days of the dinosaurs. I asked my brother about 45 years ago  who is a computor tech, With the powerful computers they have today (probably not as good as the latest mobil chips today) how long before we see vr, which was a dream of mine. He said about 5 years or so.  I would have been so disappointed if I new things weren't going to start until about 45 years later when Palmer Luckey got started on kick started. He went for 200,000 dollars but ended up with 2.5 million to start oculus. I was thrilled reading this on the internet. I said to my brother excitedly, vr is starting! At around the age of 62 I bought the samsung inovator addition, the 1st headset offered to the public other than cardboard vr. I was thrilled. 360 videos and simple games. Still I was in hog heaven. Of course every 20 minutes or so I had to stop from the overheating. And you did have to insert your phone in it like the cardboard models. But it worked much better than those. My love for vr is more than ever. 

6 REPLIES 6

Anonymous
Not applicable

Jan of 2017. Kept reading about how great it was on the DCS flight sim forums, so I ordered a Rift CV1 without controllers just for DCS. About a month later I ordered the Touch controllers and started getting into some made for VR games. Flight sims still what I did mostly even now.

kojack
MVP
MVP

First thought about? Long time ago, when I was a kid, reading about and watching documentaries on VR (the early systems).

My first actual in-person VR experience was around 1992-1993 on a Virtuality system running Dactyl Nightmare. Although at the time I was more interested in the use of an Amiga 3000 as the heart of the system (Amigas were my primary systems back then). I tried another one (a shooting gallery game with a shotgun) a few years later in an arcade, but the orientation wasn't one to one, turning your head and moving the shotgun both added together and turned your head, felt rather broken.
I also had experience with other 3d vision related tech (red/blue glasses, lcd shutter glasses, live SIRDS display (Single Image Random Dot Stereogram), etc.

In 2011 I bought a Vuzix Wrap1200VR. Absolute garbage headset. It did have stereo 3d, head tracking, earbuds, etc, but it was very uncomfortable (the majority of the weight rested on the bridge of your nose), the LCD screens were too hot near my eyes and overall it was a disappointing experience that almost put me off of wasting any more money on VR.


In 2012 I heard of the Oculus kickstarter, and didn't care.

In early 2013 I heard that the Oculus sdk was going public, so I thought "Ok, I'll take a look at the SDK, if it is interesting, I'll consider giving it a chance. I joined the forum and noticed the admin was Cybereality, who I knew for a few years on a programming forum I admined.
So I made a tech demo using the SDK and got a guy on the forum who had a DK1 to test it. Within 2 days I had a working VR demo without ever touching the hardware, so I decided to order a DK1 the next day.

Then got (in order): DK2, CV1, Gear VR, Go, Rift-S, Quest 1, Quest 2, HP Reverb G2.


Right now what do I have plugged in to my PC? CV1 of course. 🙂

I've still got them all though.

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

Had lost some interest in gaming during the years 2008 - 2017 (also got kids in that time period), but bought a new rig for the kids with a GTX 1080 in 2017. Then stumbled across the Lone Echo trailer and thought it could be interesting to try. Also the Rift CV1 bundle was only $600 over here - thus gave it a try, and never looked back, lol.

 

I still think experiencing and completing Lone Echo was worth much more than $600 - and that all other VR experiences are just some sort of CV1 bonus 🙂 I can't remember ever buying anything giving me just remotely the value I've gotten from the CV1. Well, in fact I still use the CV1 🤓 I also think experiencing and completing Alyx was worth much more than the 1k I paid for the Index. And getting the RTX 3090 is similarly justified, at least in my mind 😉 (And a fun thing, even today when maxing out all settings in Lone Echo, you'll need a faster gpu than the RTX 3090 to constantly get just 90 fps with the CV1, lol.) 

 

Have been into gaming since the Commodore 64 in the start of the 1980s.  

Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

That's a great story. I would have tried the dk kits but didn't because I'm not very handy with experimental tech.

The commodore. Wow talk about dinosaurs. From there to a 3090 is a long journey.

kojack
MVP
MVP

Ah, the good old C64. I started on the TRS-80 Colour Computer 2, but all of my friends had C64s.

That was a good thing though, I had nobody to copy games from, so I learned to write my own instead.

 

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2