New RetroView of Forte VFX1 Virtual Reality headgear

[SiliconClassics]

After a long hiatus, I've finally completed a new episode of Silicon Classics that reviews the Forte VFX1 virtual reality headgear, a mid-90's consumer VR system for the PC. I walk through all the VFX1's main features and display it in action with Doom, Quake, Flight Unlimited, Descent, and a few other titles. Hope you enjoy!

 

[barythrin]

Cool. A friend had one but I don't remember the name. It was about that year though. The one he had though I don't recall if it came with an ISA card .. it was marketed to work with multiple systems so he could hook it up to different demos (computer) or a Atari Jaguar, other game system etc. I remember it had head tracking built-in though so during one of the demos you could look left or right and change your perspective. It was pretty cool but I do remember it was fairly low resolution (like 640x480 max and I think it was really running at 320x240 which was average for the dos games of the era). Probably would have been pretty badass with Descent or something. Even the 3d glasses I had (those DID have an ISA card to plug into)/shutter glasses really made the 3d Descent look really realistic.

 

[NeXT]

I have almost two VFX1's. My parents almost murdered me when I asked for $250 so I could buy it all. They badly need that card to do much of anything and it was only last year that someone managed to reverse engineer the thing to an external box so newer systems could use it. As a result, one of mine and a spare cyberpuck sits on display.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRGVw2YiUME

Mine is attached to a PIII 1.4 with a gig and a half of ram and a Leadtek GeForce 2 MX which is the fastest card I could find with the VESA feature connector and all-around Windows 98 compatibility which for all the games it was recommended for it can handle spot-on with room to breathe. That 256 color barrier is one hell of a deal breaker for newer games like Half-Life and Deus-Ex.