I mentioned earlier in the thread that I had an old PC Gamer issue that had VR displays as the cover story. I think that even though this line of discussion got dropped rather quickly, it's apparent people forget why VR displays didn't take off in the mid-90's so it's worth a bit of a reminder since it keeps popping up in VR threads. I'll throw in a bit of context for resolution from the same issue (May 1996).
From the "Online Gaming" portion of the cover story about the future of gaming:
If you've got a fast 486 or Pentium, you can play Warbirds online in resolutions up to 1024x768 and still get a good frame rate.
Amusingly, that's from a caption of the screenshot. Here's the quote from the sidebar:
... on a very fast 486 or a Pentium, you can run the game at an amazing 1024x768 and still get more than 20 frames per second.
Note the bolded; this is just barely before 3D accelerators, yet the issue covers VR displays that were already released.
Review of Terra Nove: Strike Force Centauri:
Graphically, the game may disappoint those who've come to expect 640x480 resolution in nearly every game they purchase, even if it bogs the gameplay down to a crawl... but the game supports only two resolutions - 320x200 and a sharper 320x400.
Okay, the actual VR displays. There's several tables of facts, but resolution is not listed as one of them, for good reason. It was embarrassing for even back then.
The video monitors in each head-mounted display feature resolutions far below the high-res 640x480 mode, or even the standard 320x200 mode, that game users have come to expect in their games.
From the Forte VFX1:
A strategic partnership with LCD amnufacturer Kopin has allowed Forte Technologies to upgrade the quality of their displays to 260x230, while keeping the $1,000 price point. The result is a solid headset that clearly is the finest among the current crop of units.
$1000 in 1996 dollars. 260x230 per eye.
(Note: Some sources list the resolution as 789x230. That's apparently counting each RGB color sub-pixel as a pixel, you have to divide the 789 by 3 to get the
true resolution)
They speak of latency also.
Because of latency, you also can't expect quick responses when, for instance, you whip your head around rapidly; the software just can't keep up.
Naturally, there's no hard numbers to be found, but does that sound like the latency is anywhere near reasonable? Keep in mind none of the games mentioned in the article supported 3D accelerators at the time (the first 3DFX Voodoo didn't come out until later in the year for consumers), so 60 fps for 3D graphics wasn't terribly likely. edit: Thanks to Gangxxter, we don't need hard numbers. The headtracking lag is so bad it's very obvious from just looking at a video showing it off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0n5B3fl-bU&feature=youtu.be&t=5m34s
The list of recommended games is also somewhat telling:
Dark Forces: Hands-down the best game for use with these headsets.
That's barely what people would call a 3D game today; it's a Doom-style engine with 2D sprite enemies.
System Shock: Gives you much the same freedom of movement as Dark Forces... There's also plenty of onscreen text that's unreadable because of the low visual quality.
From the article's conclusion:
The fact is, virtual reality is still emerging technology. We're at least two years away from VR equipment that's sharp enough and cheap enough to make a real splash in the home marketplace.
Even a hype article about the future of gaming was saying the tech wasn't ready yet. I think it's pretty clear that the mid-1990's and now are very, very different.