Most tech makers are on a never-ending upgrade hunt, always looking for greater frame rates, pixel counts, and processor speeds in a lighter, sleeker form factor, but a select minority choose to look back. As a result, we now have a Nintendo 64-powered Oculus Rift configuration that is essentially the polar opposite of the Apple Vision Pro.
It’s James Lambert’s latest endeavor, following his Portal 64 demake, which attempted to transfer the original Valve game to Nintendo’s 1996 machine, and in a video posted to his YouTube channel, he explained how he came up with this unusual VR match.
The first step was to choose the correct VR headset. Lambert chose the Oculus Rift DK1 because its tracking is “relatively simple” – there are only a few sensors in the headset, and they all communicate over USB, which works perfectly with Lambert’s custom-built N64 USB adaptor.
He was then able to effortlessly broadcast footage from his modded N64 to the headset using an HDMI wire that connected their HDMI ports. And, despite the DK1’s modest 640 x 800 pixel resolution per eye, Lambert laughs that it’s “not the bottleneck here” while gesturing with the N64.
Another inescapable issue is that the Oculus Rift can read sensor data at a rate of roughly 1,000 samples per second, whereas Lambert’s N64 system can only read data at about 60 samples per second. However, after adjusting everything as much as he could, Lambert was able to send semi-accurate tracking data from the headgear to the aged console.
Lambert goes into much more detail about how he got the setup to work despite these technical limitations in his 10-minute video, which is well worth watching – but the TL;DR is that, while the Rift can run on an N64, the end result isn’t a VR experience you’d want to try for very long.
A technical feat that we don’t want to experience
The world appears pixelated due to the extremely low resolution (only 320 x 480 pixels per eye). This, combined with the input latency while tilting your head and the low frame rate, makes the entire experience “pretty motion-sickness inducing,” according to Lambert.
Another disappointment was that he was unable to complete the Nintendo experience by getting the Power Glove to work with the Rift-N64 combo, despite previously successfully getting the worn NES controller to operate on the N64 in another video. Lambert appears to be eager to continue tinkering with his N64 VR system, so possibly an upgrade will be included in version 2.0.
Unfortunately, like with other hacked hardware projects, you can’t just go out and buy an N64 VR setup unless you’re ready to spend a lot of time reproducing Lambert’s tweaks. But even odd projects like this are technical marvels, and we’re excited to see what odd hardware will power a VR setup next – perhaps a lawnmower will power a Valve Index, or another console will enter the mix with a PSP running a PlayStation VR headset, as Doom did.
