The fallen heroes of virtual reality (2014) | Hacker News Reader

The fallen heroes of virtual reality (2014)

redbull.com

80 pointsdsirijus35 comments

Didn't expect an article of this quality from redbull.com. It's a decent look into the history of consumer VR.

That said, this article is months old and I'm probably not the only one who expected some commentary on the Rift debacle.

Redbull over the last few years have been really getting into the internet side of things, such as sponsoring eSports and the like, which is a fantastic marketing move as the "internet demographic" is their target market.

I don't quite understand how they have enough money to do it all. They own several sports teams, two Formula 1 teams, and they sponsor everything imaginable. And they still do traditional advertising on top of that. All from selling overpriced fizzy caffeinated drinks.

But other than renaming sports teams, which is a little sad, they seem to do a pretty good job of managing it.

They actually make money from F1, as in they turn a profit.

They also get 'free' advertising. Red Bull is shown in F1 car form for a couple of hours every other Sunday for most of the year. This includes on the BBC and the BBC do not do sponsorship. How much is this worth? This article gives a clue:

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/sep/26/red-bull-rac...

Unless you are in the fizzy drinks business I think you would prefer to have your brand on the Red Bull car rather than any other in F1. I think you would pay accordingly hence, along with the prize money, Red Bull Racing is a profit centre.

All they do is marketing. That's why they're that good at it. They don't have their own production line, they outsource everything but marketing.

It's amazing how they fund everything they do. I'll buy redbull over their competitors specifically because of their F1 teams and Felix Baumgartner's Stratos jump.

They've moved from sponsoring to owning and running many of the events and competitions they are involved in, and make profit off of them. Energy drinks are but a small part of their brand nowadays.

There's still such a thing as an "internet demographic"?

The Rift debacle? What are you talking about?

The giant clusterfuck whereby they pissed away support from fans and devs by selling to facebook?

Debacle is exactly what it is. They've had high-profile defections, fans are apoplectic, and they have a PR nightmare on their hands. They've managed to seriously diminish the goodwill they'd built up.

The Virtual Boy actually wasn't as terrible as everyone says. Sure, it chewed through 6 AA batteries in about 4 hours and was uncomfortable to use, but there were actually some decent games (namely Red Alarm). The 3D was actually noticeable; and the whole black-on-red aesthetic was incredibly immersive.

I picked one up for something like $50 (which included 6 games) so I felt it was a decent deal as a 10 year old. No way was it worth $150 or anything, but it was a neat gadget for its time.

I thought the Virtual Boy was causing kids to have problems with their eyes because they were staring at redlines all day.

When it first came out I remember going to blockbuster and waiting in line to play some sports game I cant remember what it was called.

I think that "Virtual Boy makes you go blind" meme was just a rumor. Honestly, none of the games were deep enough to stare at them all day.

Have any of these recent articles mentioned Jaron Lanier? I haven't seen his name mentioned in the discussions, but he did some of the early, seminal work on VR and is generally credited with either coming up with the name or getting it in to the popular vocabulary. Let's not forget the pioneers.

Yes, that is a strange omission. My first VR experience was using his equipment at a VR conference in the 90's, playing a virtual tennis game. It was cool as hell, but during a 'racket' swing, I accidentally smacked an observer that got too close. I still like to think it was one of the first "VR accidents."

Just a few years later, I bought one of these: http://www.mindflux.com.au/products/io-display/iglass3D.html

It was crude and required way too many cables, but playing Descent was awesome.

Not to mention that he was just on a book tour in the last year, so he shouldn't exactly be hard to find.

I was a beta tester on the VFX-1. A 17 year old boy's dream come true. I got a choppy 20 fps playing Descent on my Compaq 486 66Mhz with 16MB RAM. I dont remember what video card I had, but in order for it to work I had to remove the cover of my PC and plug it in directly, as it wasnt yet working with VGA cables. Good times.

The article states it retailed for $200-$300, which is inaccurate - I remember it costing about $1000. Sadly I was not allowed to keep the beta unit.

Descent is the only game that has made me feel slightly nauseous playing on a normal screen (OK what was for the time a super high definition 21" screen)...

Descent was quite immersive even without VR, actually. I remember that I frequently tried looking around corners by bending my neck only to notice that, no, it doesn't work that way.

Although that could also be due to Descent being the first actual 3D game I saw.

Conversely I could play Descent all day long and feel fine, but Doom would make me feel motion sick after a few hours.

Descent was one of my favorites, though I didn't have any VR gear to play it on. Never got nauseous playing it, though I did with Castle Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake. Good times.

I half expected this to include a mention of the Oculus Rift.

It did, immediately: "As a new Oculus Rift prototype is unleashed..."

It didn't mention the most recent developments, as this article is several months old.

I feel horrible for having made my dad get me one of those TERRIBLE Tiger Rzones. Le sigh.

I remember being so mad at my mom for refusing to buy me one!

I don't think I could even get past Level 1 in Virtua Cop it was so bad, it made the Gameboy look like a super computer.

I remember trying the Virtual Boy in store shortly after getting the R-Zone and regretting my purchase so bad, but that's being 11 for you.

We had two cartridges (we bought two systems): Daytona USA and Batman. Both were horrible. After experiences like that I haven't bought anything without googling the shit out of it for reviews. Exception being someone I trust endorses it.

I had no idea redbull ran a media site.

Yeah, that was my first thought when I saw the url. Redbull? WHAT?

Red Bull is very interesting. For a company that only really sells a single product, they reach into a lot of markets.

I especially admire them for supporting "obscure" extreme sports and using their marketing prowess to bring them to light.

As someone who edges way more to the adventure sports side of things than the X-Games side, Red Bull's marketing has been extremely successful on me.

I don't drink energy drinks much and I think I even prefer the Monster drinks, but I have a much more positive view of Red Bull.

This article needs to be updated.

RIP Oculus:

http://i.imgur.com/B4sNyLK.jpg

What, no Logitech Cyberman?

or Virtual i-Glasses? Still have mine, they were really quite good (for the time, near two decades ago), with decent field of view, usable resolution & color, and pretty fast head tracking. The primary problem wasn't the technology, it was just getting buy-in from developers to include support in products. Magic Carpet showed it worked well with games, but alas few others had simple/robust support and demos only hold interest for a few minutes. Could have been so good, but suffered the chicken-and-egg problem: nobody supported it (despite being pretty simple to) because nobody else supported it.

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