The last appointment I had at E3 this year was with Oculus Rift, makers of the virtual reality headset that seems on track to actually make affordable, immersive, comfortable, and “wow, this works!” virtual reality a, well, reality. Many of you are probably familiar with its successful Kickstarter campaign and have probably seen some of the videos and things that have come of the $300 dev kits that they’ve already shipped many thousands of. This was my first hands on with the Rift — and damn was it cool.
I should point out that a “HD” prototype of the OR was also shown to us and I got to check it out. It does make a significant difference from the original, currently-shipping-to-devs Rift, but the original still blew me away. The primary difference being the HD version is 1080p and pixelation is far less visible than with the standard Rift. We tried the standard Rift first. Within a few seconds, I was comfortable with it and didn’t have any blind spots or weirdness from the lens. The demo consisted of two areas: a mountain trail with snow actively falling that led into a building, and a “remixed” version of the “Elemental” Unreal4 demo. You see, Epic recently made OR an official partner of sorts, which means OR now supports not only Unreal3 (as well as practically every other major current and next gen game engine), but also Unreal4.
I’ve tried to write this sentence a few different ways, but the point I’m trying to make is that the OR is legit — it really works and it’s going to make even the simplest scenes or experiences in a typical game something far more immersive and interesting. It’s hard to describe how amazing it is to be able to look *all* around you in real life — not using the typical right stick on the gamepad at all — and seeing a continuous game world. Character movement is still done with a gamepad, but looking around is entirely controlled by the gamer actually moving their body.
The “Elemental” demo brought you right next to the massive armored demon (or whatever he is) that you see in the demo. He stands probably nine feet tall, hah — I came up to about his waist. There was also lava flows on the sides of the level which were amazing to see.
I also tried out a more progressive ‘demo’ from CCP Games called EVE VR. This was a space combat game in which you sat down in a spaceship that had a glass cockpit. You could look all around, even behind you (although only a rendered seat was shown). Flying out in the middle of space with asteroids and stars and a massive starship was pretty incredible. Doing barrel rolls, I had to sort of catch myself from falling out of my chair a couple of times — the immersion was that convincing!
No final price or release date is yet available on the consumer version, but all that will come in good time. This company is doing amazing things and the future for interactive gaming with the OR looks very bright.
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