Above: In Arkham VR, you control Batman through his eyes, and get to stare the Penguin directly in the monocle after hanging him upside down.
If you’ve spent any time reading about virtual reality and augmented reality, you’ve certainly encountered some variation on this phrase: “VR is only a stepping stone to AR.” Just this past week, Epic Games’ chief Tim Sweeney called AR “a superset of VR.” The implication is that as VR grows, it will become AR.
I strongly disagree. After 25 years of writing about games, I’m certain that VR is its own magical thing. Moreover, having experienced VR when it was impractical (including early 1990’s Sega VR and Jaguar VR prototypes), I’ve lived long enough to see the technology nearly go mainstream — and can’t stand when people trivialize the VR industry’s hard-fought victories. What Oculus, HTC, Sony and others have collectively accomplished is nothing short of a gigantic technological leap forward.
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But when I put on the Vive goggles and experienced The Lab’s virtual archery game Longbow for the first time, I was instantly sold. In all the years I’ve played games, I had never found anything as instantly immersive and compelling as that — seeing the entire virtual world move fluidly from a first-person perspective, with twin controllers providing haptic feedback as I drew and fired arrows from a virtual bow. Feeling the tension of the bowstring and the pop of an arrow’s release impressed me so much that it didn’t matter that the game’s targets looked like paper cutouts. It felt like I was in the game.
That’s what VR is about. Since then, I’ve had dozens of other memorably amazing VR experiences — suiting up as Batman and staring down the Penguin in nearly photorealistic 3D, driving cars, flying Star Wars spaceships, jumping out of planes, and exploring horrific environments. Even playing a VR-based platform game demo can be mindblowing. Right now, I can’t wait until Wipeout Omega Collection’s VR update.
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Source: Venture Beat