I played a guitar solo for a crowd of cheering fans, levitated over a courtyard, solved clues to escape a room, teleported my AI brain into another being, tossed fireballs at zombies, and gunned down salivating demons, alien robots, futuristic cowboys and enemy soldiers.
I even smelled a “South Park” character’s fart.
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Yes, it was a big weekend.
My mission at PAX West 2016: to experience as much virtual reality as humanly possible. I showed up early on the show floor, stayed late at media events, hustled up escalators, waited in long lines, got tips from other gamers, talked my way around uncooperative security guards, and jumped onto my bike to get to a demo across town — all to experience the cutting edge of VR in video games.
I tried new and unreleased games, from “pre-alpha” builds to finished products, indie titles to major studio releases. I used the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR, with peripherals including the Oculus Touch and HTC Vive controllers, the Virtuix Omni VR platform and the 3D Rudder foot controller.
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When I started out, I had only dabbled in virtual reality games, and had pretty much lost interest in games in general. (No, I am not the typical PAX-goer in this regard.) After four days, I walked away convinced, more than ever, that virtual reality is the defining technology for the next era of games (and a lot more).
Yes, there are still many challenges, like those awkward cords that tether the computers to the headsets, limiting motion and getting in the way. Game developers are still figuring things out, like the best way to move a character around a virtual world. Some of the headsets are still uncomfortable to wear for long periods.
But in my experience over the past four days, most of these VR games are already more engaging than regular games on a TV screen, including those that use existing motion controllers.
VR frame rates and resolution are now good enough to reduce or eliminate nausea, and genuinely trick the brain into thinking you’re somewhere else. In two different games, I tried to place my arm on a virtual wall to brace myself, forgetting for an instant that it wasn’t actually there.
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I got chills walking through the zombie cemetery in Seattle-based indie game developer Eric Nevala’s Spellbound for the HTC Vive. I couldn’t help but let out a little whoop of excitement as I descended dramatically into the Batcave in Batman Arkham VR for the PlayStation 4. My heart pounded and my hands got sweaty while fighting off waves of invaders in Serious Sam VR for the Vive. And I got a genuine thrill standing on stage playing guitar in Rock Band VR for Oculus Rift.
In my experience, virtual reality will make video games accessible to an even larger swath of the population. You’ll still use a game controller, in some cases, but the best virtual reality games will just put you in the middle of them. I struggle with the controls in traditional first-person shooters, to the point of frustration. But as you can see in this demo video below, from HTC’s “Front Defense,” it’s a lot more natural and engaging to simply be part of the game.
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Source: Geek Wire