During PlayStation State of Play, Vertigo Games, in collaboration with Eidos-Montréal and Maze Theory, proudly unveiled Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow, a fully immersive stealth experience set to launch later this year.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow brings back the iconic Thief franchise and reintroduces players to The City, where danger lurks around every corner and secrets are hidden in plain sight.

Experience the world of Thief for the first time in VR, blending classic stealth gameplay with next-gen immersion. Use your body to sneak past guards and your hands to pickpocket, pry open hidden compartments, and bypass locks through tactile interactions. Wield an array of arrows and tools to distract, disable, or eliminate threats with immersive VR archery as you climb rooftops, sneak through back alleys, and uncover secrets in a dark, steampunk-inspired world. Every heist offers multiple paths and playstyles, whether you sneak past guards unseen or take them down from the shadows.

The City is a place of shadows, ruled by the tyrant Baron Ulysses Northcrest. You are Magpie, a cunning thief orphaned by Northcrest’s brutality and shaped by the streets, who steals as the only means to survive. That is, until you uncover something greater: a legendary artifact holding a legacy from the past. Use immersive VR mechanics to steal, evade, and outsmart the forces controlling The City. Unravel its darkest secrets and expose a sinister conspiracy that looms over its very foundation.

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow is brought to you by Vertigo Games, the award-winning creators of Metro Awakening and Arizona Sunshine, in close collaboration with Eidos-Montréal, and is currently in development by Maze Theory.

Richard Stitselaar, CEO of Vertigo Games: “We set out to create a VR experience where players don’t just play a thief; they become one. It’s a privilege to work alongside Eidos-Montréal and Maze Theory on such an iconic franchise and bring it to life in a way that’s never been done before. This is the kind of immersive storytelling and interactivity we believe defines the future of the medium.”

Steven Gallagher, Creative Director at Eidos-Montréal: “Thief has always been about mastering the shadows, using a mix of tools and wit to navigate its dark and dangerous world. Whether you’re sneaking through or taking a more direct approach with arrows and blackjack, it’s a place full of intrigue. Seeing it reimagined in VR is incredibly exciting, bringing a whole new depth to Thief’s atmospheric world, and we can’t wait for both longtime fans and new players to experience it in virtual reality.”

Phil White, CEO of Maze Theory: “It’s been tough keeping this one in the shadows—literally. We’ve been in full stealth mode, but now it’s time to step into the light and finally unveil Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow. The team has worked tirelessly to stay true to the spirit of the series, delivering a level of immersion unlike anything you’ve seen. This is what stealth feels like when you are the thief.”

Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow is now available to wishlist on PlayStation VR2, Meta Quest, and Steam VR.

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People Can Fly and Incuvo have today revealed that Bulletstorm VR is coming to PSVR2, Meta Quest 2 and Steam VR.

To see more of Bulletstorm VR in action, People Can Fly just released an all new trailer as part of gamescom 2023.

Bulletstorm VR puts players in the ass-kicking boots of former Dead Echo Squad Leader Grayson Hunt, as he battles his way across the abandoned resort planet of Stygia in glorious VR! Embark on a comically ultraviolent journey as Grayson and his crew try to survive and exact revenge on the corrupt General Sarrano.

Utilize everything from your Flailgun to Bulletstorm’s iconic energy leash to perform creative acts of carnage on your enemies. Effortlessly switch between melee and ranged combat – which now includes dual-wielding guns – to perform an array of unique Skillshots on your adversaries to earn additional experience and boost your abilities. These range from kicking an enemy into a cactus, to impaling them on rebar, to shooting them in the groin. In Bulletstorm VR everything is a weapon, and you’re encouraged to get as creative as possible when racking up your kill count!

“Bulletstorm is one of our most treasured properties and it’s continued to delight people over a dozen years since its initial release,” said Bartosz Kmita, Chief Creative Director of People Can Fly. “Bulletstorm VR offers the definitive way to experience the game with fully immersive presentation and motion-controls to make you feel like the ultimate badass space pirate!”

“We are big fans of Bulletstorm, and have long dreamt of how great leashing Skulls and shooting Creeps would feel in VR, so this is a perfect match for our VR expertise,” said Radomir Kucharski, Vice-President of the Management Board responsible for Products at Incuvo.

Bulletstorm VR is coming to PSVR2, Meta Quest 2 and Steam VR on December 14th 2023.

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Wolf & Pigs: Out for Vengeance – a VR first-person shooter based on the classic “Three Little Pigs” fairytale – is launching today on Steam!

Play as the “Big Bad Wolf” and put a stop to the Pig Brothers gang in this colorful, cartoon-like action romp where traversing the environment is almost as fun as shooting the bad guys.

The notorious Pig Brothers gang, feared throughout the land, has decided to invade the New World – blasting and defiling nature in order to build a secret base. The “Big Bad Wolf” is portrayed as evil by the media – bought and paid for with Pig Brothers money – but this maligned hero is the last defense between nature and pure, unadulterated greed.

It turns out that Wolf has disappeared – and everyone thinks he’s dead – but there’s a sliver of hope: Our hero has upgraded his body with high-end prosthetic arms fitted with the latest weapons – and he’s ANGRY!

In Wolf & Pigs: Out for Vengeance, you play as the last survivor of the Wolf tribe – boasting two new prosthetic arms in a bid to take revenge on the pigs who’ve practically wiped out his species. It’s time to put a stop to the Pig Brothers’ reign of terror – no matter the cost. As you embark on your first series of stages – in hot pursuit of the pigs who laid waste to your hometown – you’ll be introduced to the game’s basic movement mechanics: a neat grappling hook that can be aimed at yellow targets found around each level. Once you get moving, it’s time to get shooting!

Wolf & Pigs: Out for Vengeance features a variety of weapons – including bombs, a pistol, and even a machine gun. (The grappling arm can also be used to knock out enemies after they’re stunned.) You aim and shoot using motion controls – swapping between different types of weapons (and your grappling hook) with both hands. The piggies will never know what hit them…

Wolf & Pigs: Out for Vengeance is now available on Steam. Wolf & Pigs: Out for Vengeance is compatible with HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

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The post Here Little Piggy Pig. appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Little Witch Academia: VR Broom Racing (LWAVR), the VR racing game from UNIVRS, Inc. based on the famous anime, takes off on Oculus Quest in late 2020 then PSVR, Oculus Rift and SteamVR with support for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in early 2021.

Directed by Junichi Yamamoto, whose past positions include opening and ending movie director on The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and storyboard artist of Batman Ninja, LWAVR puts fans in the shoes of a new student at Luna Nova Witchcraft Academy.

Learn to soar with the help and encouragement of fan-favorite characters from the popular anime while UNIVRS, Inc.’s motion sickness reduction technology keeps the focus on the exhilaration of flying.

Become part of an all new story told across more than 10 tracks spread throughout familiar areas around Luna Nova. Pair up with fellow students to be the first to cross the finish line or purify ghosts in single player mode, then join real-world friends via online multiplayer to explore the rich environments of Little Witch Academia in immersive VR.

Little Witch Academia is a Japanese anime series produced by Studio TRIGGER, one of the leading animation studios founded by the creators behind legendary shows such as Neon Genesis Evangelion. The series consists of two short films, the second of which found huge success on Kickstarter with $625,518 raised from 7,938 backers, and a 25-episode TV series currently available on Netflix.

Successfully funded on Kickstarter and Campfire, a Japanese popular crowdfunding platform, LWAVR raised over $165,000 USD in total between the two campaigns in July 2019. It was originally scheduled for release in June 2020, but adopting protective measures against COVID-19 has resulted in a change in plans.

LWAVR will be available on Oculus Quest in late 2020 while PSVR, Oculus Rift, and SteamVR versions will follow in early 2021. It will feature voice acting in English and Japanese from the talents who star in the anime.

Everyone that works on STG is a volunteer. If you like the site and it’s contents please think about donating. Even a small amount helps keep the servers running.

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I’ve spent the last few weeks putting HTC’s Vive virtual reality kit through its paces. This premium VR system device is a collaboration between Taiwanese cell phone manufacturer HTC and the renowned PC games hub, Steam.

Whilst nobody is going to publicly confirm it, it is likely that the Vive and HTC’s collaboration with Valve came about as direct result of Oculus’ purchase by Facebook. Previously happy bedfellows, Oculus and Valve had been patting themselves on the back for years, Valve supplying much of its know how to the Rift project. After the Facebook deal Valve took their expertise to HTC, who had been working on their own VR project.

The result was the HTC Vive, the world’s first SteamVR device.

And I’ll tell you right now, it’s bloody good.

Unlike the seated experience of Oculus Rift, Vive allows players to move about in a virtual reality environment. It’s this “room-scale” VR and the motion controllers that actually have a presence in the games that give the Vive the edge over its competition. Not only does the consumer version of Vive offer players more functionality over the Rift, but it has also beaten the VR trailblazer to retail.

Every VR demo I’ve experienced in the past has had me either standing or sitting there, fidgeting with a controller whilst my head spins with the visual feast surrounding me. All my experiences with VR be it on Rift or PlayStation VR have been great. They’ve all given me exactly the technology I’ve longed to play since the first, brief, appearance of Commodore Amiga-based VR arcade machines back in the early nineties.

But none of them could prepare me for the sense of presence offered by the Vive.

It’s ironic that of all the virtual reality kit that I’ve briefly tried out over the past few years: Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and Samsung Gear VR, the one that I’m most impressed with I knew nothing about prior to its quiet launch back in April 2016.

HTC’s Vive is VR’s best kept secret. Beating Facebook’s Oculus Rift to retail and in functionality, the Vive offers well-heeled PC enthusiasts a glimpse into the future and the opportunity to step into and feel part of another world.

The Vive was officially released to consumers in early April. With units shipping directly from HTC in Taiwan, up until very recently, orders have taken a month to arrive. To make up for the wait, orders placed on the HTC web site included a software bundle featuring Google’s Tilt Brush, Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption – all great showcases of the Vive’s features.

First, though, let’s take a look at the kit.

As you would expect with an extremely expensive piece of kit like the HTC Vive, it comes in a box befitting its price tag.

The Vive consists of three main elements that all come together to create the most immersive VR experience available today.

The Vive offers users what is called room-scale VR. Unlike the usual sitting down gamepad-twiddling. The Vive allows players to move about in VR space, up to a maximum size of 4.5m x 4.5m. The minimum space required for the room-scale VR is 2m x 1.5m, so most people should have the space. If not, Vive can be used sitting down with most software.

Room-scale VR is achieved by mounting two infra-red emitting Lighthouse base stations in each corner of the play space. Positioning and screwing these to the wall using the included mounts is probably the most complex part of the whole set-up. Both the VR headset and the two Vive controllers have a number of sensors all over them, enabling them to be tracked, with incredible accuracy, in the VR space.

The Vive’s head mounted display (HMD) is probably the most cumbersome of all the VR devices that I’ve tried. It has two 1080 x 1200 screens, one for each eye, covered with quite a bulbous bit of plastic. It doesn’t weigh a lot, but it certainly takes a while to work out how to properly fit it on your head.

Once you get the hang of it, you realise that you don’t need the headset pressing hard into your face and you almost forget that it is there. HTC, like Oculus have chosen to use concentric-ringed Fresnel lenses in their headsets. This makes the lenses thinner, allowing your eyes to sit closer to the screen, increasing your peripheral vision. There’s also probably a weight advantage as well. The downside is that the rings are sometimes visible when in use.

Back to those 1080 x 1200 screens. Whilst that is a fair few pixels, your eyes are only a centimeter or so from the displays, so the pixels are very much in view, if you focus on them. They can be distracting, especially when looking at distant object, which can seem blurry. This is often referred to as a screen-door effect (SDE) – because that is exactly what it looks like.

Like the rings from the Fresnel lenses, the SDE is an unfortunate and unavoidable artifact stemming from technology that is only just maturing. Higher resolution displays would counter most of the SDE, but we just don’t have the power to push that many pixels at the required 90hz. In order to provide a comfortable VR experience a low latency display at 90 fps has to be maintained – hence the vigorous hardware requirements.

The final components required for the Vive VR experience are the Vive motion controllers. Each Vive controller has twenty sensors which, with the aid of the Lighthouse base stations, are tracked 1:1 within the VR environment. The controllers, once switched on can be “seen” through the VR headset with such accuracy that you can easily reach out a grab them.

As you move the motion controllers in front of you the same movement is replicated with the 3D modeled versions within the VR environment- right down to the virtual triggers depressing. The various buttons and triggers make the Vive controllers an extension of your hands allowing full interaction with objects in VR. As well as the trigger, the controllers also have two grip buttons on the handle and a circular touchpad for directional input, among other things. There’s also a system and menu button.

The Vive kit comes with some earbud headphones. Whilst these do the trick, I’d strongly recommend swapping them out for a proper set of cans as sound is as much a part of the VR experience as anything else. No need to worry about a mic, as the headset has a built-in microphone.

With the Lighthouse base stations mounted and powered using the included cables, it’s just a case of powering up the small hub box, plugging it into a spare HDMI socket on your graphics card, connecting the USB cable to you PC and plugging the headset into the hub. You are then all good to go.

HTC’s Vive is powered by SteamVR, a special add-on for Valve’s Steam service that includes the drivers for the device. Once the software is installed, the Base Stations detect your headset and the motion controllers.

A short set-up process calibrates your equipment and determines your play space. You can choose from a seated arrangement or the room-scale VR experience.

The room-scale VR with its accurate tracking of both your head and hands, using the Vive Motion Controllers, puts users within the VR environment instead of simply being surrounded by a 360-degree image. This allows you to walk around in your virtual world. You can crouch down, look up, look sideway and behind you- it is exactly as if you are actually there.

The Vive combines the normal VR offered by the Oculus Rift and, soon, PlayStation VR, with the interactive experience of a Nintendo Wii or Xbox Kinect, placing you right inside the game with full 360-degree movement within your play space. The controllers actually exist in the VR environment and allow players to interact accordingly, further increasing the immersion.

In order to stop you from falling over objects or slamming your face into your wall, the Vive uses a Chaperone system that brings up a visible grid within the VR environment if you get near the limit of your play area. You can tone it down a bit, or switch it off entirely – which I wouldn’t recommend. The headset also has a camera on the front that can be switched on to see an overlaid view of your actual room, good for locating controllers that have not been switched on.

With the device set up and switched on, it’s time to put the head set on. After a brief tutorial based on valves popular Portal games, you are left in the hub area. Pressing the menu button brings up the SteamVR menu where you will find all your Steam games listed.

There are two front-ends, so to speak. The first is a customisable environment (you can even have a bonafide Holodeck background, complete with door) where you can interact with that very familiar-looking SteamVR interface. From here you can access all your steam content, which can be played in VR natively- if it is a VR game, or in the SteamVR Theatre. I never got this to work properly – possibly due to my triple-monitor set-up.

The other front end is the Vive room, which at this time it’s a choice between a floating platform high above the clouds or a dojo-like room. In here you can position three-dimensional short-cuts to your favourite games.

Before I go any further, if you are expecting some AAA gaming experience of the traditional blockbuster variety, I think you are a few years early. This may be the second coming of VR, but it is still in it’s infancy. Low-res screens in the headsets and lack of grunt even in top-PC’s means that we are going to get showcases, tech demos, indie-style games and other VR “experiences”.

But that’s OK as we are talking about a huge paradigm shift, one akin to switching from radio to TV. There is a shit-load of difference between playing a game and being in a game. And it’s going to be a while before we can see through the spectacle of it all in order to realise that the VR games right now are all a bit rubbish. Remember how awesome tennis, squash and squash practice was on those old B&W TV games back in the 70s?

But VR is a different platform than PC gaming. An HTC Vive equipped PC is an entirely different gaming experience than a PC hooked up to a monitor, or multiple monitors. The two are really incomparable. Also, though, things that work very well in a PC game do not always work very well in VR.

A first-person shooter like Doom is likely to leave all but the most cast-iron stomached players spewing onto the carpet with VR-induced motion-sickness. Interestingly, it is experiences that would appear mundane on a monitor that give users the best VR experiences.

At the moment it is still early days with regards to Vive software. A number of existing games have been retro-fit for VR, notably Frontier’s Elite Dangerous space sim and Project CARS, the excellent racing game. Both offer an incredible Vive experience.

Considering we are only a few months into this VR revolution, Valve’s Steam Store is already stocked with some jaw-dropping VR experiences.

TheBlu, a ten-dollar game downloadable from the Steam store give players the opportunity to experience a whale encounter, up close, from the deck of a sunken ship. It also places you at the deepest depth of the ocean as the midnight zone is slowingly lit up by amazing iridescent creatures that you can actually reach out and touch. You can also stand amongst a coral reef and watch as thousands of fish dart by. It’s amazingly real and will leave your heart beating hard.

Valve’s showcase application, The Lab, is another great introduction to VR. Via a number of mini-experiences, players are given the chance to explore virtual real-world locations, dismantle robots partake in a bit of archery.

But it’s Google’s Tilt Brush that wowed me the most. Making full use of the Vive’s motion controllers and room-scale VR, Tilt Brush is a 3D painting program that enables you to create incredible art that you can walk around and inside of. You can even paint with neon light and stars.

Using the HTC Vive is one of them most amazing experiences I’ve ever had. For the last few weeks it’s been transporting me to wondrous places that have had me swinging from trees, flying in spaceships, landing aeroplanes and shooting zombies.

The downside to this incredible experience is the cost. Not only are you going to have to own a meaty PC powerhouse (the minimum recommended GPU is a Geforce GTX 970), but the actual cost of the kit, factoring in shipping and the usual Australasian rip-off mark-up is not going to leave you with much change from AU$1450.

The Vive is a full-on Oculus killer with its room-scale VR and motion controller. But it’s not all roses. As well as being the most uncomfortable VR head mounted display that I’ve tried so far, for such an expensive piece of kit, it’s not particularly well made. The HMD feels cheap and the plastic lenses are asking to get scratched. The review HMD’s lenses also seemed loose, calling up the interpapillary distance display if I moved my head too quickly.

My review of the Vive also only lasted a couple of weeks before one of the base stations packed up. Unfortunately, this fault, one of the IR LED emitters seems to be a commonly reported fault.

Checking Reddit, it seems that HTC’s global support is somewhat lacking, their processes unable to really handle a non-cell phone multi-part (and very expensive) system like the Vive. Thankfully, Shane the Gamer’s Australian HQ is only a stones threw from the Sydney HTC repair agent, Fonebiz who, along with the local HTC folks, were able to get the faulty equipment swapped out very quickly.

There’s no doubt in my mind that VR has now arrived. The Vive, like the Rift and the upcoming PlayStationVR are going to change interactive experiences forever. It’s not perfect, but it works.

Today’s VR experiences with the Vive are amazing and it’s only going to get better. If you’ve got the wallet and PC capable of running it, I 100% recommend the HTC Vive. This is the virtual reality that we have been waiting for.

Come back soon for a look at my top ten Vive games!

The post The VR Revolution Part Two: HTC Vive Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Virtual Reality – I can’t say it without thinking about some early-1990s spandex-suit wearing cheesy vision of the future. But finally, it seems, after loads of false starts, VR is here.

I’ve been wanting to writing about virtual reality for a while now. This first part of a three-part series is a collection of thoughts and experiences that I’ve had around VR over the last year.

Imagine the scene, you are driving in your car, a getaway driver, racing from a heist. The car in front pulls over in front of you trying to cut you off. You can brake and risk the cops catching up with you of keep on going, nudging the car in front out of the way. You stamp on the accelerator, ramming the car, but you misjudge the impact and instead throw your Holden Commodore into a spin, hitting the walls of the Sydney Airport Tunnel.

Game over. Except it’s not. It’s real life, and you are on your way to work. You were playing the game last night, using your new VR kit.

Whilst we are still a long way away from VR experiences that are indistinguishable from real life. Already early adopters of virtual reality kit like HTC’s Vive and Facebook’s Oculus Rift are reporting a strange disconnection from reality when they remove their headsets after extended play session.

For many this weird feeling disappears after a while, but not for everyone. What happens after weeks of solid play sessions? Could a player become unable to distinguish reality from a VR environment?

The effects of long-term exposure to VR are an unknown and something that, no doubt, we will be hearing a lot about in the future.

As with all new technology, there’s is likely to be positives and negatives. But for every enthusiast that ends up having too much of a good thing, neglecting real life for their virtual existence, there are likely to be many other benefiting from this technology. Virtual reality will extend beyond games, offering people with disabilities experiences that they would be unable to have, as well as therapeutic applications and training opportunities.

VR first became a pop culture obsession way back in the early 90s, but it was likely Disney’s Tron, a decade earlier, that captured the public’s imagination as to what it would be like “living” in a computer game. For many, though, it was the abysmal Lawnmower Man starring Pierce Brosnan that was for many their first look at VR.

My very first experience with VR was with the commodore Amiga-powered Virtuality 1000. It had god-awful graphics and a huge headset, but it was my first taste of 3D gaming. Since then I’ve enjoyed 3D gaming using e-Dimensions’ system on PC and the built-in capabilities of modern consoles.

But in truth, I’ve been waiting for this moment in time, the dawn of REAL virtual reality.

The VR revolution has now started with the Facebook-backed Oculus Rift and Valve’s SteamVR platform, the HTC Vive being shipped out to the early adopters right now. Sony’s PlayStation VR is also about to join the party in October.

The fantasy of stepping into another world is an ancient one. One previously only fulfilled by dreams, hallucinogenic drugs or a vivid imagination. Virtual Reality enables the user to live on their dreams like never before- visiting new places and other worlds. It is an otherworldly experience that is difficult to explain to someone that has never experienced it.

At the moment the term virtual reality is being used to cover a multitude of different experiences, not all of which are actually VR. Popular culture terms all these as virtual reality devices: Google Cardboard, GearVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

The key component of a VR experience is a sense of presence. Instead of feeling like an observer the use should feel as if they are there, physically in the scene.

Watching a 360-degree video on your mobile phone, slotted into a Google Cardboard or GearVR, is fun, but you are only watching a video. If you step left or right your perspective doesn’t change like it does in the real world, the video moves with you. The accelerometer in your mobile phone adjusts the image for your head movement, but that’s about it.  Some mobile VR applications render their experiences in real-time, but the computing power of today’s mobile phones puts a limit on the complexity of these scenes. You are very unlikely to have a real VR experience with a Google Cardboard or GearVR.

Augmented reality takes camera captured video and adds elements, like a building, object or overlays in real-time to create an augmented view of the real world. There are lots of AR apps available, making this very popular on mobile device. The was also the basis for the ill-fated Google Glass. AR offers a very similar experience to VR, but it’s not. It’s just enhancing the real world- not immersing us in a new one. Perhaps one day AR experiences will be able to totally overlay the real world with a VR environment, but we are not there yet.

Mixed reality takes augmented reality a step further, blending the real world with a virtual reality space to create a truly hybrid environment. Microsoft’s upcoming Hololens will be a good example of this when/if it is finally released.

Whilst Microsoft are rumoured to be working with Oculus to bring the Rift to the Xbox One, they are also threatening to turn VR on its head with their Holoportation technology.

Virtual Reality is going to make it very easy for people to visit far off places and see sights out of their physical and financial reach. Microsoft’s Holoportation takes it one step further in bringing other people to you. Two people in different locations, surrounded by 3D cameras and wearing Microsoft Hololens glasses, will be able to see each other, via lifelike 3D avatars, and intereact with each other as if they are standing in the same room.

Within ten years there’s going to be absolutely no reason to leave home. Virtual socialising may be the angle that Facebook are working on and their reasoning purchasing the Oculus Rift.

The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are currently the only commercially available VR devices. Technically speaking they both offer similar types of VR experiences, but it is the HTC Vive that currently offers the better VR experience.

Currently, the Oculus Rift only offers a seated or standing experience, due to the single IR-sensing camera that needs to be mounted in front of the user. Moving the headset out of the camera’s range will break the experience. Also the Rift’s motion controllers, Oculus touch, are not yet available, with players controlling their VR experience with a standard Xbox One controller.

HTC’s Vive gives users a more immersive VR experience with “room-scale” VR and motion controllers. Vive users can walk about in an area up to about 25m2 and use the motion controllers to interact with the VR environment. The controllers becoming an extension of their hands, tools or even weapons that move concurrently inside the VR experience. The 360-degree view, being able to walk about and having you hands “in the game” give Vive a true feeling of presence.

At PAXAUS 2015, I spoken to the guys from Melbourne’s Zero-Latency about their partnership with Dell, using the veteran PC vendor’s Alienware Alpha mini-PC’s, to create a virtual reality version of Laser Tag. Players equipped with Oculus headsets, faux rifles and a backpack mounted Alienware Alpha, run around in a warehouse that is transformed into a zombie-infested environment. It’s cutting-edge stuff right now, but I couldn’t help but thing that it is going to soon become commonplace.

I tried Rebellion’s Battlezone using the PlayStation VR at PlayStation’s 20^th Anniversary event last year. It was a truly immersive experience really feeling like I was setting in the cockpit of a tank whizzing around a Tron-like battleground. Whilst it’s wasn’t my first VR experience, at the time it was the most impressive. And that’s not bad considering it was still not the final version of Sony’s entry into the VR arena.

It seems that technology has, for the most part, caught up with the dream the early-90s dream of Virtual Reality. We are finally able to step into other worlds, or make our own.

I can honestly see no end to the application of VR in our lives.

Using programs IrisVR’s Prospect, designers can immerse themselves in life-size versions of their work. With VR technology, clients can physically walk through their new house or examine their new product up close.

Historians and archaeologists now have the opportunity to recreate the past in VR allowing modern visitors to experience their ancient heritage like never before.

The applications for VR, aside from games, are limited only by our imagination, and our imagination is about to go into overdrive.

End of part one.

The post The VR Revolution Part One: The Future Today appeared first on Shane the Gamer.