Virtual reality is almost here. It is poised to change the gaming industry forever, but is VR all it’s cracked up to be?
In the past few years, there have been huge developments in regards to virtual reality technology. You could argue that it is all thanks to the Oculus Rift, which gained an immense amount of publicity via Kickstarter. It gained so much attention that Facebook went ahead and bought the company for a casual $2 billion.
Since then, global giants such as HTC and Sony have jumped on the band wagon, and started to develop their own VR headsets. Microsoft is also joining the party, however, they want to separate themselves from the rest with their Hololens.
According to Sony, The PlayStation VR is going to be in consumer’s hands sometime in the first half of 2016. What is it like? Is it actually a game changer? Or is it going to flop like 3D TVs and the PS Vita? (I am a proud owner of a PS Vita, but I can’t deny it flopped). I will take you through my experience and opinions on the PlayStation VR, and hopefully be able to take you to a dazzling place you never knew.
You might be reading this (and thank you if you are!) and you might ask yourself ‘What does this guy know about PlayStation VR?’ I actually had the chance to experience Playstation VR at the EB Games Expo in Sydney. I am personally not a fan of 3D mediums such as games and movies, as I find them to be gimmicky. As a result, my expectations of VR was not very high. I was given a ten minute demo with the headset by Sony, and boy it did not disappoint me at all.
First up, the headset. The headset felt very well made. As you can see from the picture above, it looks very modern and attractive. On the face of the headset are multiple LED lights, similar to the Dualshock 4’s light bar. The PS4 camera is able to track the movement of the lights to create a one to one movement. The headset was attached to a hub by two long and thick cables, presumably one for video and one for power. The hub was connected to the PS4 via USB. Amusingly, the PlayStation reps had to hold the cables so that it would not tangle, and get in the way. Sony stressed that the PlayStation VR unit they had was still a work in progress prototype, and was not the final consumer product. It would be interesting to see what Sony does to solve the cabling issue for the retail release. I put on a pair of headphones, placed the VR headset over my head, and strapped it on with ease. The headset felt comfortable and not too heavy, even with it on my head/face. I was surprised at the lack of calibration required from the lenses. The two lenses aligned perfectly, and within seconds I found my self being lowered into the ocean in a shark cage.
Surrounded by water and marine life, I felt like I was back at the Osaka Aquarium in Japan. The fishes felt so close to me, to a point that I felt like I could reach out and touch them. They eventually swam away from me, and into the darkness. This was the first moment that I experienced the depth of perception the VR had created. Everything seemed calm, relaxing and surreal, until a great white shark came out from no where and started to bite the cage. I took a step back, literally. As the shark was shaking the cage, I could not help myself but to try to ‘hold’ on to the cage. I tried grabbing the cage, but I was reaching out to thin air. Obviously there was no cage to hold on to in real life. I must of looked like a fool, however I was not the only one. Every person who tried this demo instinctively did the same thing. This was the moment that I realised that PlayStation VR was better than I initially thought. The demo ended with the cage lifting back to the surface. I had barely survived the shark attack, but was I quickly ushered away to another demo.
The next demo was described by the PlayStation reps as the more ‘fun’ demo out of the two. I sat down on a chair and readied myself for another adventure beyond. Again, the two lenses adjusted within seconds, and this time I found myself in a dark and derelict room. The room looked real, it wasn’t photo realistic real, but a CGI quality real. I turned my head to look around, and I was really in another world. I knew that my friend Mitch was standing behind me, but as I turned around to face him, all I saw was a door, with a eerily lit up exit sign. I then heard the clicking sound of a lighter coming from behind. As I quickly turned my head around, I saw a large, muscular, tattooed man standing in front of me. Again, he wasn’t photo realistic real, but the CGI quality looked very believable.
He proceeded to speak in a Cockney accent. ‘Ello Guv’na’ was not what he said. Instead he started shouting profanity at me, left right and center. I begin to realise I had been kidnapped by the mob, and was about to be tortured by this potty mouthed lackey. The potty mouthed Vinny Jones cross Vin Diesel lookalike, grabbed a blowtorch and immediately shoved it towards my face. My reaction? Well, what do you do when someone shoves a blowtorch in front of your face? I instinctively moved my head away from the blowtorch, like any other sane person would. This was the moment I realised I was fully immersed in the virtual world. I was expecting to have my face melted off, as if I scored my self a cameo role in the latest Saw movie.
As the blowtorch was centimeters away from my face, a mobile phone started to ring. It was the angry man with ‘roid rage’s phone. Vinnie Diesel used his full extent of his limited vocabulary to tell me how lucky I was. After a little D&M with his presumed boss, he tells me to stand up and pick up the phone. I proceed to stand up, and as Sony advertised, the camera position shifted in a one to one motion.
Equipped with a couple of Move controllers in my hands, I reached out to ‘grab’ the phone with my right hand. I was surprised that the motion felt natural, like as I was really picking up a phone in real life. I ‘placed’ the phone towards my right ear and I could hear the big boss man asking me where the diamond was, and that I better remember as my life depended on it.
The demo then teleported me to another scene. I was now standing in an office, behind a desk. The desk in front of me was full of drawers. I begin to open the drawers one by one, searching for that elusive diamond. Again, opening the drawers felt natural, and I never struggled to open a drawer. The demo really showed off the VR’s depth perception, as I actually had to lean forward to see what was inside the drawers. Eventually I found the diamond, and immediately the lights went out. I heard a calm and collected voice instructing me to find a gun. Multiple flashlights appeared in the distance, and I knew I was in trouble.I quickly rummaged through the drawers and eventually found a 9mm pistol, with a couple clips of ammo beside it. I picked up the gun and loaded it using the Move controllers, in the same motion as you would in real life. As I rotated my hands, so did the gun. A couple of jerky movements aside, the Move controllers replicated all of my actions.
The lights came back on, and I saw about five bad guys armed with guns in the distance. They started to fire at me and I immediately ducked behind this virtual desk for cover. The loud and crackling gun shots coming from the headphones helped intensify the situation. I must of looked silly in front of everyone in the real world, like that person using a Wii Remote for the first time silly. I begin to shoot back, and was engaged in an intense firefight. I had seen others who played this demo try move away from the desk in the game. They were quickly held back by the PlayStation reps, as they were about to run into a wall in real life. They were fully immersed, and didn’t realise that they were actually in a booth playing a virtual reality game. I on the other hand, kept my cool and waited for the sound of them reloading. As soon as I heard the click of an empty magazine, I readied myself for action. I stood up like an action hero in a John Woo movie, and began to shoot back. Bullets started to fly and furniture started to break. It was such an adrenaline pumping moment. That moment did not last however, as I realised that I missed all my shots. Cowering back behind the desk, I reloaded and was ready for round two. After countless shots were fired, I eventually got them all.
The demo eventually ended, and the PlayStation reps took the VR headset off. As the headset came off, I felt a slightly weird sensation. I cannot describe what that sensation was. Possibly motion sickness? Perhaps it was the feeling of being back to reality? Or quite possibly it was my brain sending signals to my body, asking for more VR time. My heart was pounding and my hands were actually shaking. At this point, I was sold. There are no words that can describe my experience with VR properly, it is something that you must experience yourself. It wasn’t just me, everyone I spoke with that had tried VR said the exact same thing, ‘It just felt real, a little too real’.
That being said, I do have my concerns as a gamer and as a consumer. How will they solve the cabling issue? The last thing you would want is to find yourself tripping over the cables, while being immersed in your virtual world. Worse yet, you could get spooked and actually pull the PS4 console out from your TV cabinet. How will they implement VR in traditional games like The Witcher or Call of Duty? How long can you game for with the VR headset before you experience motion sickness?
There are so many questions I have, but I guess I won’t know the answer until it launches. All those questions and concerns aside, I can now proudly say, without being ashamed, I am now a belieVR…
The Collective 