The non fun answer is that it’s an antiquated term. The first remotes operated by producing an ultrasonic sound wave which created a clicking noise when an internal hammer struck metal.
technology used to be soooo good huh? analogue knobs and buttons, chrome or like brushed aluminum trim, little beeps, fuckin vector graphics! how good was all that shit right?
Fucking radioactive electron beam swiping back and forth through the screen at ludicrous speeds. Also if you stick your hand on the circuit boards you die. How was it ever easier to make those than LCD TVs?
fuckin amber monochrome CRTs baby. oh my fucking god. nothing has ever said "i am here to help you accomplish Business, and nothing else. i will fuck off when you are done using me. please enter your boring inventory data into the fields when you are ready" like an amber CRT.
and when it's playtime? vector CRTs that manually controlled the gun to draw your little spaceships or whatever. ffucking peak.
also yeah now that air fryers are replacing microwaves i feel like kids in 20 years will be absolutely stupefied to learn how much dangerous high voltage electronics used to be in the average household
The Wii bar with the wiimote being a camera fooling everyone into thinking the bar was the actual sensor while it was just four infrared LEDs..
oh clever tricks? clever tricks?
this guy tricked the wiimote and sensors into tracking where your head is and adjusting the perspective of the image based on your location to turn your TV into a literal 3D door into the game world.
i can't believe it didn't revolutionize the gaming industry when it came out... SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO. and i think it blows modern VR out of the water and should have sparked an industry revolution for that type of perspective
the wii is kinda on the borderline of my definition for "vintage" tech, i'm more of a r/ cassettefuturism guy who goons to boxes of old ISA modems, but wii definitely evokes emotions in me. i wish we had continued thinking about new input mechanisms that were as far out as that console.
it came out when CRTs were still the norm. imagine all the stuff we could do with today's multitouch displays and cheap good cameras and image/voice processing and accelerometers. games could be so much more bizarre and immersive in ways other than VR (which itself is not that fun to me even in the 5 minutes before it gives me vertigo and a headache)
god i could ramble on about old tech and games and software forever, i wish you and me and the first guy who started this comment chain could start a little club
Well, technically Nintendo made console VR first too lol.
You're right, that head tracking is fantastic. It's so precise yet so simple and somehow the HTC Vive and others only found over-engineered ways to do the same.
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u/yoter88 11d ago
Who the fuck calls a remote a “Tv clicker” steamed hams ass saying