I have a distinct memory of a visit to Epcot when I was a kid and seeing this amazing VR tech demo where you could sit on a jet-ski-like arcade controller, put on this really heavy HMD, and fly around on Aladdin's carpet for a few minutes. I do not know how there wasn't a super long line, or maybe there was, but I somehow was lucky enough to get my few minutes with the insanely expensive thing, and it definitely blew my fucking mind. It was way ahead of its time and felt like some magical future sci-fi tech none of us would ever see again. They ran a 60fps demo on million-dollar SGI machines. They let you see the massive and colorful SGI beasts (as well as the development team!) through a large glass window into the next room. This was a year when our $2000 home PC was barely able to run Doom. I also am amazed they managed to pull this off without a bunch of people getting motion sick.
It took 20 years but now I have an unbelievably better VR setup in my room and it cost me a few hundred bucks. Gives me goosebumps to think what might be on my desk in another 20 years.
I hoped to find some history on this to see if my memory was right and luckily there's this excellent blog post from 2012 by Avi Bar-Zeev, one of the engineers who worked on it. It's a fascinating read.
Anyway, the main reason it wasn’t commercialized was the cost and logistics. As far as Disney rides go, they tend to be very expensive. But you have to look at the throughput to make it up. For VR, it took 5 minutes to on-board each guest plus a 5 minute ride @ 500k/seat (not including the HMD and motion base, which we left off). That’s less than a hundred people a day per seat, vs. many thousands for a rollercoaster.
Turns out Avi also co-founded Keyhole (Google Earth), helped build Second Life, and what do you think he's up to these days? Gotta be another crazy sci-fi tech: Amazon Prime Air. :) Surprised he's not been snapped up by Oculus, actually!
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