It was a fairly quiet year for new hardware at the Game Developers’ Convention – except for one little piece of gear. That platform is, of course, the Oculus Rift, a virtual-reality headpiece that makes you look like you belong in a Daft Punk act and shoves you face-first into the game.
My colleague Andrew and I got a little bit of time to do some hands-on gaming with the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, and although we only got a few minutes of play time, it was undoubtedly one of the most memorable pieces of tech on the floor. Oculus VR’s latest debut looks almost identical to prior models, and neither of us have ever experienced gaming through VR, so we came at it unbaptized and unspoilt.
Want to know what we thought? Well, just look below.
James Trauben’s Impressions
I never knew precisely what to think of the Oculus Rift platform. I’ve been playing games for most of my life, and despite so many sci-fi narratives telling me I should, I’ve never felt that I needed to be shoved face-first out of the real world and into the game world through a clunky virtual-reality headset. It’s practically asking for a “kick me, I’m a geek!” sign on your back.
So considering that I only played EVE Valkyrie on the Oculus Rift for something like three minutes and it was still one of the show floor highlights, it must be doing something right.
The headset isn’t easy to get used to at first, and there’s this awkward period where you’ve got it over your head and need to figure out the exact angle for the bridge of your nose. But put on the headset, get a decent pair of headphones with noise-canceling, and the world outside the game just fades away.
Thus immersed, it felt as if a whole new range of motion was presented by the Rift. They were little things: the ability to look in a different direction than you were flying, getting a feel for the cockpit as part of a whole ship, watching your six to spot enemy craft, and tracking them for missile locks – they shoved me into the experience. I would have cheerfully stayed in Valkyrie much, much longer than I had, so that peculiar mating of high-tech VR display and just the right game worked wonders.
Of course, those bewildering, exciting moments of high-octane dogfight didn’t necessarily mean that every Oculus Rift title worked well. The other games on display, ones also showing off the Sixense STEM controller, didn’t quite grab me in the same way. I quickly remembered why first-person games tend to give me motion sickness.
Andrew DiLullo’s Impressions
The future of Virtual Reality gaming is here… maybe. The future is strangely uncomfortable, among other things.
I mean, the device is comfortable enough, but after wearing the device for multiple hours, I might begin to think I’ve developed X-ray vision. However, the immersion is definitely real. When you don the optic device, your world disappears and you become the pilot, if only temporarily, and enter a world completely foreign as if you lived there all your life. That is, unless you played what I played: a virtual reality simulator of sitting on a couch playing a video game.
Oculus Rift is a machine with incredible potential, especially in the realm of First-Person development, but since the device tries to create a virtual world of absolute immersion, it’s in the developer’s hands to seriously up their game. With Oculus Rift, suspension of disbelief will be an especially precarious bridge to cross, and must be handled very delicately. If you can cross that bridge, there will be something very precious waiting on the other side.
Also, as if enforced by the design of the device, wearing Oculus Rift is eerily similar to putting on a helmet designed for a cockpit, which is why it feels so perfect for any game that seats you at the helm of a ship. The GDC demo of EVE Valkyrie was a very welcome sight.
To anyone reading this, Oculus Rift needs a Mechwarrior game or something similar. Now.
—–
This article was written with assistance from Andrew DiLullo:
There’s a point when the Sun appears to touch the Earth, and on that horizon line you might find me. I am Andrew DiLullo, and from my perch I weave together ideas of intrigue and wonder perhaps only capable out here on the brink. My design philosophy is that within every idea greatness lies, waiting to be discovered.