Edmund Sci. mirage & similar videogame (fwd)

[Yiing Lin <ylin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 1995 14:24:46 -0500
From: gugumuck@xxxxxxxx
To: photo-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Edmund Sci. mirage & similar videogame

Re: all!

I'm WAY behind on reading digests (i guess that's just life in these United 
States...)
and apologize ahead of myself if this has already been addressed..

A couple or three years back, there was a video arcade game that seemed to 
work on the same principal as the Edmund thingie. It was an old-western 
style shoot-em-up that was housed in a largish white bowl-shaped deal that 
had, as i recall, a large plastic dome over the top of the bowl (it looked 
very much like a bathroom device...). It had a cabled plastic 
light-sensitive handgun that you shot at the outlaws that quickly appeared 
and "drew" on you.Which was a rather odd experience since the only thing you 
saw other than the white bowl were the gunslingers and the occaisional 
screaming maidens popping up. 

Good God, i just realized how this must look like to others!! I can swear it 
was neither hallucination nor D.T.!!  ("Where's My Doctor!!!!!")

The game was advertised on the sides as being "3D" and oddly enough, kinda 
worked, at least as well as most any non-binocular presentational method. 
The characters themselves were quite cardboard-y, but there was indeed a 
sense of space to the interaction.

It seems that the video may have been projected (from where, i didn't see) 
onto the plastic dome, which must have been partially silvered inside, to 
reflect onto the white inner surface of the bowl. This would, i believe, 
account for some optical shennanigans percieved due to convex/concave 
flipping about of the images, easily misleading the unenlightened general 
public to believe it to be 3D.  Pure conjecture on my part, as i obviously 
have no technical knowledge of this unit. Nor, perhaps,  as i've been told 
before, a clue : ).

I've seen this game in only 2 locations; 1 in Indy"s Union Station, &1 in a 
truckstop
in Ohio (!!) (Where, incidentally,i saw the only "DragonsLair 2" i've ever 
seen...). Perhaps someone can confirm the existance of this unit and help me 
to keep the men with the VERY long-sleeved  jackets at bay a while longer!!


                           Continually on the lookout for Stereoscopic 
Snake-oil Shams,
                                ("Man see with forked eyes"?)    -->tc

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"...And it came to pass, a Man appeared, of which the people asked, 'Could 
He be the one?' ;
                                                   ...But it was only Bob."
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