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I've recently been watching through the early series' of GM and Bad Influence. Something that crops up repeatedly is virtual reality headsets, first in arcades, then as early consumer units that can be connected to home computers. That was 15 or so years ago. I don't frequent arcades myself but this fad looks to have faded into obscurity. It seemed to me like a perfect sound idea, especially with the ever growing popularity of 3D first person shooting games in the modern gaming arena.

Off the top of my head you could, for instance, have a headset with motion sensors which could detect if the wearer is standing or crouching/hiding. You could also have a lifesize plastic gun with a recoil unit, so when the VR wearer holds it up and fires, it recoils as a real gun would, and it could be seen as a fully rendered proper gun with muzzle flashes, ejecting shells & sound effects in the VR LCD.

Surely this sort of thing and much more is easily possible today, could be done fairly cheaply, and would be a better, more realistic, and immersive way to interact with a game than playing via a flat monitor. Anyone shed any light on this?

The last virtual reality spectacle I saw or used was at Butlins Minehead. I was about 12 at the time. Which was about 15 years ago now. As you said they really pushed the virtual reality thing but it just wasn't very good.

We had to queue up for about an hour. It was like a spaceship and you had to climb up stairs to get to it into it. It seated about 8 people. There were two shows. One when you're skiing and one when you're going down a water slide.

Not really games but it used the same technology. Virtual reality is still kinda used but in a different way. There's a 4-d cinema at Weston pier. I guess the 3DS is a kind of like a virtual reality.

Virtual reality is dead but 3-D seems to still be doing well still. I guess the price of the headsets and production costs killed of virtual reality before it even began. When units are not selling. No company will put resources into it if they don't think they'll make a return.

How long will the 3-D phase last?