Blog — games / experiences

Standing in your room at home or at an event with a big white plastic gun in your hand pretending to shoot deadly spiders the size of a bus might seem a little odd for a fully grown adult. But inside the PSVR headset it’s a matter of life of death!

VR Gaming

Farpoint has made a real effort to take legitimate gaming to a VR platform. It’s designed in such a way that it quashes many of the difficulties we see users having in VR. For example, enemies largely approach from straight ahead and movement is for the most part restricted to forwards and backwards to avoid the need to whip your head around - PSVR one, motion sickness zero. But fear not! You’ll have little time to notice the game's limitations as you’re captivated by your Aim Controller.

Aim Controller

Looking at the gun in reality you’d be forgiven for mistaking the Aim Controller for a piece of drainage pipe in your bathroom. But inside the PSVR it’s transformed into a deadly weapon. The integration of the Aim Controller is seamless, it’s a thing of beauty! Every shooter should require the aim controller.

Holstering the Aim Controllers makes every battle significantly more realistic. In pulling the trigger you can see every moving part of the gun operate to fire your bullets towards the onslaught of jet-pack wearing baddies. The need to hold the gun up to your eye to utilise the sight on the gun immerses you in the chaos playing out in front of your eyes. The shudder of the gun in your hands as your spray the enemy adds to the realism and in just five minutes you forget you’re not actually holding a shotgun!

Compatible Games with the Aim Controller:

• Farpoint
• DOOM: VFR
• Bravo Team
• ChromaGun
• Dick Wilde
• Arizona Sunshine
• ROM: Extraction
• Special Delivery
• The Brookhaven Experiment

Verdict

Farpoint feels like a stepping stone to something much greater. The locomotion issues of VR leave the game with little hope of greatness, but it does well to limit game play in such a way that you can experience a first person shooter in a small space in your living room. However this game is elevated by the Aim Controller and we’d buy it over and over again just to experience the controllers brilliance.

We wait in anticipation of a AAA game that can harness the Aim Controller in a FPS with depth to its campaign mode and aesthetics to match.

Try out Farpoint and the Aim Controller with any PSVR Bundle hire. For more information click here or get in touch and speak to one of our team.

We now stock the TPCAST! An add-on for the HTC Vive that enables the user to roam free of cables while in VR. 

Tethered

One of the major problems facing high end VR right now is that you are tethered to a PC by a long cable. This cable shoots all the data from the PC to the headset and into your eyeballs delivering you the VR experience. In some cases this isn't a problem but for games and experiences that require the user to turn around such as Holopoint, The Brookhaven Experiment and most RPG's, you will get tangled up. Not only is this a health and safety issue, constant coiling of the wire causes it to degrade and ultimately shortens it's life span, meaning downtime of the whole HTC Vive headset while you replace the cable.

Above: Up until now this was our best option. Fishing anyone?

Why not try before you buy?
Hire the TPCAST from us from £25 per day - click here

NO LONGER!

With the TPCAST you simply connect the cables provided into the Vive, replacing the original USB, power and HDMI cables, strap the receiver to the top and the receiver to a battery which fits in your pocket and you're on!

Check out the video below from TPCAST which gives you an idea of whats in the box and how you connect it to the HTC Vive.

Down with the conference call!

The phone call, the video call and now the VR meet up. The meeting room has changed drastically over the past 20 years, giving people the opportunity to quickly connect and converse. But sometimes you need a little more than a quick call or perhaps you want to show your audience something that can't be done with a video call. *fanfare* Intro the VR meeting, yes an actual meeting as opposed to a call. I popped my first virtual meeting cherry not long ago, it went something like this...

I just met Han Solo

I recently met with a client in Toronto, Canada, I didn't travel out to Canada, I sat in our office in Essex, England. I donned the HTC Vive and waited in the lobby of VR Chat, a virtual world made up of spaces (chat rooms) where you can meet real people, play games and chat, you can also create and submit your own world or space.

The objective of the meeting was to run me through the programme ahead of an art installation. Users will, in pairs, teleport into a dedicated room in VR Chat and be greeted by people from around the world. These people then toured the guests through a series of spaces which were huge immersive submissions for a competition titled Beeple VR Design Competition. 

As I got familiar with my surroundings I heard someone say "Hi, Russell?". I looked around and was greeted by Han Solo of Star Wars fame. It wasn't the real Han Solo of course but an Avatar of the person I was meeting. Han walked up to me and said hi, then he ran me through the controls which enabled me to move, interact and gesture as a normal person would. As I had wireless controllers in my hands; every wave, hand on hip and head scratch was animated onto my Avatar, further enforcing the reality of the experience and making it seem real.

Han then said "follow me". As he pointed to one side a portal opened up, he then walked through it and vanished. Doing as I was told I walked through the portal and was transported into a huge space with a massive sculpture which was easily 100 feet high. 

Once the tour had finished my mind was blown, the spaces designed by digital designers on offer was one thing, but the fact I was walking around a virtual world, talking to someone as if there were actually there was incredible! Everything I saw was literally out of this world but this can easily be scaled down to lets say, an office space with meeting rooms for example. Users could wear VR headsets and meet with others from around the world, making the experience much more intimate than a bodiless video call. 

Facebook are onboard

Oculus, the company that brought you the Oculus Rift and Gear VR is owned by Facebook. One of their recent keynotes focuses on the social aspect of VR and how it might be used. Check out the keynote below.

Immediately you can see the use of facial expressions, presentation of media, and the use of 3D objects which may benefit industries that work with product or packaging design. Oculus Rooms which currently sits in the Oculus library and accessible for free is another example of Facebook's push into the world of social VR. Further reaffirming their interest in this form of meeting place and one that is already being used by 10,000's of people all over the world if not for business but leisure.

Is meeting in VR the future?

I think so, but its not an immediate threat to the likes of Skype just yet. There is still a long way to go before we have headsets in every office. We will need to see a huge uptake of mobile based or standalone headsets, not requiring a PC, before big businesses adopt this form of communication as the norm.

When we see school kids meeting up in VR to study and chat as we did with MSN Messenger, then businesses will follow suit and we can all be Han Solo in our next meeting.

Soar like an eagle 

We recently had the pleasure of hosting Graeme in the Virtually Mine office to test his Bird Flight Simulator on the HTC Vive.

Graeme, passionate about all things flying has coupled his 10 years of commercial flying experience and 20 years of gliding experience with a love for bird of prey to create a beautiful simulation of an eagle in flight.  In order to make this experience fully immersive Graeme also built a motion chair to replicate the mesmerizing environment you find yourself flying through.

Watch the simulation is action HERE

Virtually Mine are fortunate enough to now be able to offer this simulation for events across the UK alongside other experiences like the ROVR. We asked Graeme to put together a few words to describe the simulation and explain the particulars:

“Have you dreamed of what it would be ... to soar like an eagle?

Aquila Bird Flight Simulator lets you experience soaring bird flight using virtual reality.  You embody one of three species of eagle flying over either Northwest Scotland, a part of Columbia, or Graham Island in British Columbia. This is not arcade-style flight but an accurate simulation where, like a real soaring bird, you can make use of ridge lift and thermals. You can use Motion Controllers, a simple gamepad, or head tilting to steer, while fans and a motion platform work to further immerse you.

The various control options allow for a variety of differently abled individuals to try flying like a bird, as long as they can sit safely in the motion chair.  Meanwhile a large LCD screen allows spectators to watch their flight.  If you have another screen or projector you would prefer to use, this can be accommodated, as can any other reasonable request.”

If you’d like to host the simulation or want to find out more just get in touch!

It isn’t often that you’re transported back to your childhood but we were fortunate enough to be able to transport guests of the LGC Investment Summit back to the 1980’s with a rendition of Pac-Man, except this time the game was played on a ‘360 treadmill’ called ROVR and in Virtual Reality!

In all it’s glory Pac-Man chomped up and down gobbling white orbs, destined to clear each level without being caught by a ghost. In reality however, we saw guests furiously shimmy on the ROVR to move Pac -an just like you did with the joystick back in the days of the arcade.

Once you’ve Donned a pair of low friction shoes the ROVR allows you to move through some of your favourite games just by sliding your feet across the dish.

Move! You’re the controller

Virtual Reality is awesome, we love it! But sometimes it’s not enough to put on a headset and sit down, you want to move through the experience and feel part of the journey. Something traditional consoles could never offer with just hand held controls. The ROVR does just that, using the sound of your sliding feet as the forward control and the direction you look in to move you left and right.

Running on a variety of VR headsets it’s a real spectacle at events taking a VR experience to a whole other level. We’ve tested a few VR favorites at events including Pac-Man, Affected and Minecraft VR! It’s Suitable for those over 16 and requires a minimum of a 3x2m space with a monitor.

The ROVR is now available for hire at events across the UK With a VR Specialist - email us on info@virtuallymine.co.uk for more information.