Anybody suppose VR will ever make a comeback?

#1 Well, Gareth, I can truthfully say that VR never went away. The target audience and tech has just shifted.
There is still a heavy demand and usage of VR technology in the serious games industry, particularly military simulation. When I was at I/ITSEC, I lost count of the number of booths and demonstrators using VR headsets/goggles, virtual glove implementations, and other wireless VR devices.

A lot of the same products used for the purpose of simulation can be used for traditional gaming.

#2 Well, that's good. I figured it was still used in the more in-depth simulation situations (military, medical, etc.). We just need to hope that the lowering prices of technology makes it reasonably desirable to use in a consumer situation.

#3 How low of a price are you honestly thinking?

#4 Well, naturally I wouldn't expect them to come down too much to the point of, say, a video game console itself, but right now the price is so high that it still excludes a practical use in arcades, or something like a place made specifically for VR games (a VR lounge, as it were).

I don't expect technology to allow it to drop to a direct-to-consumer level anytime soon, but that's the main thing I wish--that the technology would be used more for entertainment. But you know, costs, etc.

But I'm relatively senseless in my thought process (as evidenced by my strange sentence structure...), so it's more of just a ramble about how cool it would be than really wishing for it to happen. I know there are steps in new types of interactivity (games like DDR and systems like the Wii), so I guess it's just best to follow those and see where they take us.

#5 Honestly enough I was thinking of how a VR system could work using Torque. The conclusion I came to didn't/doesn't seem impossible, just a lot of work. And it wouldn't be cheap. If you take two small 320x240 LCDs and position them just right with a few mirrors, you could have a working HUD with all the chip wiring for less than $300 a piece. You could quite possibly have 2 different views (left and right) on two head sets. And all you would have to really do, is use 640x480 full screen as your display... Am I rambling too much?

The actual console would just take a standard VGA video signal and split it into 4 separate 320x240 screens. 2 of those screens would act as left and right for player one while the other two would act as left and right for player 2. There I think that made more sense...

Ok. And for the head movements to "look around", you could just use 2 sets of Accelerometer. On to check how your head is rotated left and right. And one for up and down. All the components that make up the HUD is actually less than $300 a piece if you know where and how to shop. This is actually something I was thinking of putting together, when I get my money back together.

Does this sound right? Or am I insane?

#6 Http://www.emagin.com/

They sell a VR head set for $1500 retail. You can find one on ebay.com for $900-$400 usually. It is the only one I'm aware of that goes for a reasonable price.

You can also sometimes find some really odd controllers in the game pad and joystick sections of ebay. I looked before posting this and didn't see any though.

#7 This site is also handy for comparison stuff: HDM/VR Headset comparison

There are a lot of choices based on quality and price.

#8 This just sold for $500

Using a premade/off shelf product may be a bad idea, it'd bump the price up a lot, and you'd prolly lose a lot of your flexibility. I guess it'd be easier for development as far as speed goes cause everything is already done for you. But it's definately something worth looking in to.