Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a lot of companies work really, really hard to make VR as immersive as it can possibly be. Touch controllers to mimic your hands, trackers to bring real objects into VR, haptic feedback that make virtual sensations real.
There’s a different class of VR that’s also been building itself up, one that takes place in dedicated spaces outside of your home. For the most part, this area has been dominated by The Void, which refers to this as hyper reality and is partnering with Disney to make a fully immersive Star Wars VR experience.
But now there’s a new kid on the block called Nomadic VR, which announced itself back at CinemaCon in March. It’s hands-down the best VR experience I’ve ever had. Nothing else has come even close.
Escape to VR
Kalon Gutierrez, Nomadic’s head of growth, didn’t really give me any instructions or prime me on what to expect as I put on the rig, which comprises of an Oculus Rift and a PC backpack. He only told me that Nomadic had built a modular system, designed to be updated, adjusted and changed quickly. When it’s all fully ready, and a bunch of different experiences are built, customers will be able to choose what they want to do.
“The idea is that concepts can be changed out from half an hour to two hours so that venues don’t have a significant amount of down time,” said Gutierrez.
As for the Oculus and PC backpack? Nomadic isn’t out to create its own VR headset here, as The Void has done. It wants to be platform agnostic, so that it can quickly upgrade to the best tech, bouncing between HTC Vive and Rift, different PC backpack manufacturers, or sensor makers. Whatever provides the best experience, Nomadic wants it.
The headset was on, the speakers were down and a lady with a British accent started giving me instructions. The display lit up with an exact model of the Nomadic experience room in front of me, and I walked over to its door. It went from pristine white to brown and aged, like an old, abandoned maintenance shack in the wrong part of a city.
The lady told me to look for a flashlight – it was dark, after all – and I needed to light the way. So I turned my head slightly to the right and saw it, but was it really there? No one had handed me a touch controller of any sort, so I reached out and grabbed it – and lo and behold, it was an actual flashlight. I pointed at the door and reached for the handle.
I swung the door open and entered, closing it behind me. The light lit the way, as I moved through a room of security monitors and down a hallway, with a furnace on the left. Nice touch, I thought, some added atmosphere to make the place feel extra murder-y. However, as I passed by the furnace, it got really, really warm. The furnace seemed to actually be there, and it was surrounded by pipe fencing that made sure I couldn’t get too close to it.
On the right was a file cabinet with some pizza on it, flies circling it in a celebratory fashion. At this point I had to ask… was I going to reach out and feel a real slice of Sicilian? I put my hand down, but nah – just glass. Immersion broken, until a voice called from outside the window and the security monitors sprung to life. Some guy was talking about some other guy and something bad was happening and only I could stop it and save the city.
I wasn’t really paying attention, I was too busy admiring the cool breeze coming in from the window. Soon, I was told to put my flashlight down and check a filing cabinet for a gun. The one-to-one tracking here was amazing, and armed with my new weapon I headed outside and greeted by an obstacle: a plank.
I stepped on the plank and immediately felt like I was actually five stories up. The plank bent as if it was actually bridging two tall objects and threatening to snap under my weight. As I moved along, my balance shifted and I thought I could fall to my death, though I soon decided there was no way the Nomadic team would let me die… would they?
The last notable moment came as I stepping into a construction elevator, which felt as rickety as it looked. But how?
Soon I was done, the headset was off, but I had a lot of questions. Firstly, how did it all feel so real?
Back to reality
Gutierrez took me into the door I came out of, as a grimy downtown area turned back into a brightly-colored room built with LEGO-like structures. Up above, there were a bunch of cameras and sensors.
On the right, I saw the elevator, but it didn’t actually move up and down. Nomadic’s head of physical design, John Duncan, who worked at Lucasfilm’s special effects arm, came up with this one. As he explained, little motors underneath the elevator give it the impression that it’s moving, and it’s designed to make you feel every jolt and every jerk, while fans blow down to give the feel you’re moving upward.
“[Duncan is] the one who’s thinking of ‘hey we need to create an elevator that feels like you’re riding up and it’s a little bit shaky and bumpy and gives you the sense you’re not in the most stable environment,'” Gutierrez said. Duncan was also the one who thought up the grooves on the EMP lever, making it feel old and rusted when it was instead shiny and new.
The plank I feared so much? It was just on the ground by itself. Duncan had added in small risers that made it feel like it could bend and sway under human weight. There were also LED lights on it speaking to sensors up in the roof that registered every movement. So when the plank bends, its virtual counterpart bends too. Even better, if the system sensed you were nervous about the plank by standing there too long, it would widen the platform to make it feel easier to walk on.
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Source: Wareable