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Comment by rollulus | Hacker News Reader

I have to admit that I didn't check every second of the video, but given that the views on the extra screens are rotated +/- 90 degrees to the main view, shouldn't this also be their orientation in the physical setup, with your head in the centre, so that you're immersed with the game world?

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Hi, I'm the one in the video. I've had this comment a few times, with CRTs, no way. Your face would probably be 8 inches away from the front tube to fill your peripheral vision and you wouldn't be able to focus on it without getting fatigue for long.

It is possible it was meant for a CAVE VR room projection system, but I think the more likely answer (as there is no rear view) is that it was just a limitation of the engine. There is no system in Doom for rendering only part of the 2D screen offset from the main view (you cannot pan to look up or down as an example). Doom's FOV was 90 degrees for a single view, so they likely just rotated the drone views 90 degrees to render the "adjacent" area of the screen.

Ah yes CAVE VR exactly like that. Not sure if it was the exact thing though

It shouldn't be a limitation to the engine, because they could've either translated to the sides and/or rotated 45 degrees

I remember it being promoted pretty much as this video demonstrates, back when DOOM was new and people were just getting to know the networked options. Some old school video game players were adept at handling weird projection systems and this would not really faze them. Let's be real, DOOM was 2.5D afterall.

Speaking of ID games in a CAVE VR... somewhere in late 1990s to early 2000s, I ran into a caveman who was playing with some kind of hacked up Quake for the CAVE. It had integrated the head tracking, so you really got the full-immersion from being able to duck or peek around corners, etc.

I don't remember whether they really made the weapon aiming work with the full 6 DOF wand tracking, or if it was just a walking simulator.

There used to be places where they had Doom running in something similar to a lightbox (At SARA Amsterdam). The game was basically projected on 3 planes (left, right, front). The box/cube would be something like 2m - 3m cubed, and you would stand in the middle. I've never had the privilege of actual playing. I think this is why the 90 degree angle is in such a way.

So basically a a real-life 3d skybox, if you're familiar with 3d-engine terms [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skybox_(video_games)

You'd think that but somehow the alignment roughly works during gameplay. I don't get how (probably a brain thing) but watching his frag his way through level 1 and 2 didn't look that wrong, and actually made sense. I was checking the flank monitors for enemies, it seemed to work.

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