…that the Virtual Boy doesn’t have full 384×224 pixel LEDs, but due to costs only one-column LEDs from which the images are generated by two fastly oscillating mirrors? (from the main page)

Sorry if it’s already known, but the Vb’s display is not related to costs, it’s the only way to get a perfect black “screen”. Gunpei Yokoi wanted the Vb to be “fully immersive” and didn’t want the player to see a screen while playing. With a backlit lcd screen, you can’t obtain perfect black pixels so we would have seen the borders of the screen.

Unfortunately, none of the Vb games uses that feature to its full potential (in my opinion); sprites or 3D objects emerging from nowhere and floating on a black background, never touching the limits of the screen and therefor giving the illusion that there’s really no screen :] (maybe a cool homebrew concept !)

(Again, sorry if it’s an already known fact, i discovered it last week! And sorry for the english of course :-P)

You know that might actually be a pretty cool effect. Most games have obvious borders around the edge of the screen, but really you could make the area you draw to any size/shape you want and the player wouldn’t notice. Full size, the VB screen has a 12:7 aspect ratio. I was thinking about this for direct BGMap drawing… If you drew to an area 36×27 chars wide, you’d get a 4:3 aspect ratio, and have enough chars to do two BGMaps for full stereo. Of course, there’s also the potential for other screen shapes entirely (circular screen anyone?) If the VB had survived longer we might’ve seen things like this.

Craby wrote:
Unfortunately, none of the Vb games uses that feature to its full potential (in my opinion); sprites or 3D objects emerging from nowhere and floating on a black background, never touching the limits of the screen and therefor giving the illusion that there’s really no screen :] (maybe a cool homebrew concept !)

Well, I don’t know about never touching the edges of the display… Things have to come from somewhere. Unless you could find a really smooth way to make things fade in, there would still be a hard border that things would have to cross as they come onto the screen.

Sorry if it’s already known, but the Vb’s display is not related to costs, it’s the only way to get a perfect black “screen”. Gunpei Yokoi wanted the Vb to be “fully immersive” and didn’t want the player to see a screen while playing. With a backlit lcd screen, you can’t obtain perfect black pixels so we would have seen the borders of the screen.

I also thought that they tried LCDs, but in all the tests the players just ended up seeing double instead of a stereoscopic image.

Fwirt wrote:
Well, I don’t know about never touching the edges of the display… Things have to come from somewhere. Unless you could find a really smooth way to make things fade in, there would still be a hard border that things would have to cross as they come onto the screen.

I know it won’t be easy but we don’t lack imagination here, right ? 😉

Maybe just an oldschool game like Donkey kong/Pengo/boulder dash in a non-square shaped area where things appear and desappear “magicaly”, or just appear and the objective is to destroy/make disapear everything and the next level would come from the background. Something like “flOw” on PS3 and Psp could be a good idea (with some adjustments).

Thank you for your answer Fwirt :]