The Future, I hardly knew ye
So...round about 1996, drunk on hype from John Romero (this was in the days when he was swearing up and down that the only weapon in Quake was going to be a hammer...would it technically be a first-person shooter, I wonder? Or a first-person bonker?), I began feverishly researching head-mounted displays. There was a lot of buzz, they were the Next Big Thing, it was clear they were the Wave of the Future, because...well, they were displays that went on your head.
At the time, there were a few HMD's available, but they cost about $12 billion and wearing them apparently felt similar to gluing a brick to your eyebrows, only less cool-looking and with worse color reproduction.
There was one shining nugget of promise, however, one glistening corn kernel of innovation in the turd of the industry's mediocre engineering. At the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington, somebody had come up with the bright idea of using a laser to paint a video image directly onto your retina. It was called the Virtual Retinal Display, and it was fricking sweet.
To my video-game obsessed, massively dorky self, it was like someone had told me the Philosopher's Stone would be available at Gamestop in 6-12 months. It seemed like the perfect approach: high resolution, potentially small and light hardware, plus it used lasers. LASERS, blasting uncut awesome right through your optic nerve. I was convinced that I should save up to purchase one, as they'd probably be available by 1998 at the latest. 1998, I determined, was the temporal point at which I'd shed my dull meatspace existence and live full-time in the Neal Stephenson fantasy dream world that I'd been promised. I'd devote my life to founding the first Shaolin temple in cyberspace, and go around on a Tron lightcycle porking Mags in between Recognizer encounters
Ten years later, what happened?
Well, the patents are owned by a company named Microvision. They've productized the awesome, made it concrete. They took that shining vision, that Platonic ideal of a completely immersive virtual environment, and they made it into an expensive Virtual Boy for the guys who used to beat me up in shop class.
No, there is no justice. Future, you've failed me for the last time.
At the time, there were a few HMD's available, but they cost about $12 billion and wearing them apparently felt similar to gluing a brick to your eyebrows, only less cool-looking and with worse color reproduction.
There was one shining nugget of promise, however, one glistening corn kernel of innovation in the turd of the industry's mediocre engineering. At the Human Interface Technology Lab at the University of Washington, somebody had come up with the bright idea of using a laser to paint a video image directly onto your retina. It was called the Virtual Retinal Display, and it was fricking sweet.
To my video-game obsessed, massively dorky self, it was like someone had told me the Philosopher's Stone would be available at Gamestop in 6-12 months. It seemed like the perfect approach: high resolution, potentially small and light hardware, plus it used lasers. LASERS, blasting uncut awesome right through your optic nerve. I was convinced that I should save up to purchase one, as they'd probably be available by 1998 at the latest. 1998, I determined, was the temporal point at which I'd shed my dull meatspace existence and live full-time in the Neal Stephenson fantasy dream world that I'd been promised. I'd devote my life to founding the first Shaolin temple in cyberspace, and go around on a Tron lightcycle porking Mags in between Recognizer encounters
Ten years later, what happened?
Well, the patents are owned by a company named Microvision. They've productized the awesome, made it concrete. They took that shining vision, that Platonic ideal of a completely immersive virtual environment, and they made it into an expensive Virtual Boy for the guys who used to beat me up in shop class.
No, there is no justice. Future, you've failed me for the last time.
posted by at 2:03 AM
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