“built around (if I recall correctly) an Amiga”

Several, I think. I’m pretty sure there was one machine for each eye, at least. Possibly another co-ordinating the whole show. It certainly wasn’t the sort of setup where they could have offered a cheap version to plug into your A500 at home, anyway.

Crap though it was, I must admit to being a bit envious that you even got to try it out. I’ve never even seen one.

But yeah, I tend to agree. Your comparison with the recent 3D fad seems spot on. “Ah, yes, there have been 3D booms before, but this time it’s different”, they said. It wasn’t.

As you say, the technology is now good enough, compared with the Virtuality era, that it’ll probably hang on in niche applications, but the way I look at it is this: you need to be able to drive two HD displays at an absolutely rock-solid, not a single dropped frame, 60fps (minimum) for VR. And if you have the graphical grunt to do that at a reasonable level of detail, then you have the grunt to drive one display at an amazing level of detail (or even higher definition). It’s always going to be playing catch-up with “flat” displays. Add the inconvenience factor to that, and I just don’t see it catching on.