General / Off-Topic The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park

Hi all. Me and my 9 yr old son went there yesterday and it is a retro computer geek's paradise :D
They had a BBC Micro, running the original Elite, right next to a beast gaming pc running ED with an Occulus Rift.
We had a play with the Rift, obviously, and I was blown away by the 3D effect but the resolution was quite grainy, a bit like staring at an old CRT screen, close up. You could barely read any text. Is that how it usually looks? It would be truly awesome if the resolution was HD! Maybe it will be one day. Anyway, the museum is well worth a visit, there's some impressive old gear there and it really shows how far technology has come in a relatively short space of time.
 
Awesome, sounds like an interesting place to visit.

As for the blurry Occulus, from what I've read on the forums that seems to be a regular thing for the current version that is used in Elite, yes. It wont be that way permanently though, I think it's because Elite uses an older version of the Occulus SDK or something along those lines.
 
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My lad couldn't believe the way we used to play games back in the day. They're all there and running for you to play with, BBC micro, zx spectrum, Amiga, C64, Atari, acorn. Just loads I can't even remember. They also have an actual Space Invaders arcade machine, proper retro!
 
Awesome, sounds like an interesting place to visit.

As for the blurry Occulus, from what I've read on the forums that seems to be a regular thing for the current version that is used in Elite, yes. It wont be that way permanently though, I think it's because Elite uses an older version of the Occulus SDK or something along those lines.

a 'stock' (for lack of a better word) Rift will be, yes, quite grainy and the text will be difficult to read.
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However, if you flip on over to the VR forum for E:D, you will find numerous tutorials, tweaks and programs you can work through and run in order to dramatically increase the visual acuity of the Rift. Will you be able to get by the 'screen door' effect of seeing pixels close up that the OP mentioned was like staring at an old CRT monitor close-up? No. But, you will get to the resolution point where the effect is far less noticeable.
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When combined with SweetFX, these tweaks really make it great.
 
I visited it a few weeks back, it's brilliant.
It made me feel old when I saw some of the vintage commercial computer equipment, there was stuff there that I used to work on!
It really shows how quickly things have advanced, I'm not that ancient yet! (only 63)
 
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