It was life or death. Human or dinosaur. I didn’t hesitate.
I stuck out my actual, flesh-and-bone human leg, and kicked a virtual dinosaur in the face.
It was kind of dumb and kind of exhilarating at the same time. Dumb, because the dino crumpled as soon as my foot connected. Exhilarating, because I had legs.
Bear with me a sec.
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Gun, knife… or your feet? Island 359, a VR dino-hunting game, lets you choose. | CloudGate Games
At best, today’s best consumer-grade virtual reality headsets — the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Sony PlayStation VR — track your head, hands, and general position in a room. You might be able to walk around, but you don’t have legs. Or a body of any sort. You kind of just… float.
But at the 2017 Game Developers Conference, I found my VR legs for the first time. I tried Island 359, a “Jurassic Park”-like dino hunting game that’s recently become a full-body VR experience.
CloudGate Studio co-founders Jeremy Chapman and Steve Bowler clipped three $100 HTC Vive Trackers onto my body (one onto my belt, and one onto each shoe) before handing me the Vive controllers and headset.
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You need three of these pointy HTC Vive Trackers, plus a pair of Vive wands and a headset, to track your body effectively. | Josh Miller/CNET
And then, with all five of my primary body parts clearly visible to the game (thanks to spinning lasers) I looked down — and saw a working waist, legs and feet!
As neat as it was, I didn’t walk away convinced I’d invest in a Vive Tracker setup myself. Even assuming I owned an $800 HTC Vive headset to go with my homebuilt gaming PC, a set of three trackers would cost an additional $300, not counting CloudGate’s shoe- and belt-friendly mounts.
I’d have to justify that price by counting on game developers creating a bunch of games with foot-mounted Vive Trackers in mind, which has rarely been a safe bet with specialized video-game peripherals in the past. (Joysticks and racing wheels being the notable exceptions.)
But as I continued my appointment with HTC at the Game Developers Conference, I discovered I might not have to. Perhaps I’d get my dino-kicking fix at a VR arcade instead.
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Source: CNET