(2 of 3)
For now, though, VR entertainment is starting to bloom where movies did nearly a century ago: in the arcades. A penny in the slot once offered streetwise strollers a peek at Fatima's dance; now $4 to $30 gets you a sleigh ride on a space ship (in Cybergate) or a fretful stroll through a computerized Acropolis (in Dactyl Nightmare, by Virtuality). And why not the arcades? Video games are a $5.3 billion business in the U.S., about as large as the theatrical movie market.
Not all the effects fit the strict definition of virtual reality. Only a few make use of the computer helmet that guides your wraparound view and allows you to "move" objects in cyberspace. Most are only virtually virtual: variations on arcade games or tweakings of Disney's Star Tours ride, which craftily gyrate a pod in time with jolting screen images. But all the systems have a common goal: to give you a new-horizons, touchy-feely, out-of-mind experience. Virtual reality? Perhaps. Virtual theatricality? For sure.
The games, or rides -- they are so new there is no consensus on what to call them -- are basically complex versions of three familiar movie genres and video-game formats: the Star Wars space adventure (shooting things), the Days of Thunder road test (running over things) and the Rocky boxing match (punching, kicking and gouging people). These are mostly boy toys made for the computer generation. You won't see a VR game of some sentimental senior- citizen film -- unless it's Driving Miss Daisy Crazy, with the flivver flying down back roads and a convoy of rednecks in pursuit.
Movies and TV are passive experiences. The VR games are interactive. And the more active you are, the more you can enter into them. Players who hone their kill skills develop a zestful proficiency; they become self-improvement junkies while the merchants get rich. VR can also be a socializing medium, even of the zap-you're-dead! variety. TV, video games and videocassettes keep folks hermited away; VR gets them out of the house with a new gimmick -- a twist on the lures that '50s moviemakers, faced with the challenge of TV, offered film audiences with Cinerama's roller-coaster ride, 3-D's spears and paddleball, William Castle's Tingler showmanship.
The big difference is choice. The only choice a filmgoer or TV viewer has is to walk out or turn off. Even Star Tours and Universal Studios' Back to the Future ride are, at heart, drive-in movies; you're just driving in a car with no shock absorbers. VR, which lets you wander at will through a force field or minefield, offers a democracy of entertainment. As VR programmer Randal Walser wrote, "The filmmaker says, 'Look, I'll show you.' The spacemaker says, 'Here, I'll help you discover. ' "
And what worlds there are to explore! Though some games are, in one exhibitor's phrase, "obsolete by the time we buy them," and though the images may be at the Pong or Space Invaders stage of sophistication, they do give you the sense of being out there, weightless and heedless, in that mysterious space between your ears.
Some of the rides are almost mystical. In Virtual Adventures, by Iwerks Entertainment, you glide underwater to rescue rare eggs hatched by a benevolent Loch Ness creature. The other games are a mix of Captain Kirk and Beavis and Butt-head; this one is Barney.