VR
I’ll give a star rating for each, with the top rating of 10★ the best experience of all the
devices to use as a comparison. These demos were hard to get into, either
you had to book a demo right at 10am which filled up in 5 seconds, for line up for up to 6 hours for
Doom. Some demos you couldn’t even get into unless you were Media, but
Ubisoft did provide peep windows so we could watch them play Star Trek Command
Center
Playstation VR
Farpoint with Aim Controller.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get into one of these demos, but
people walking off seemed to really enjoy the experience. They said that
holding the riffle made a big difference, and the objects being in your face
was causing people to dodge on instinct.
Oculus Gear VR
(Samsung Phone attachment)
8 ★
This has changed since I’ve has last tried it at PAX last
year. The viewpoint for the eyes are no longer a rectangular square with
a separation barrier between the two. Instead it is two circular lens for
each eye to look past.
I tried three games with this device. Each game gave
me a very different experience
Pin Ball, just like a real PinBall machine you are
standing over it, well actually you are standing way over it and your chin had
to be against your neck to look at the bumpers (some good feedback for the
developers). Trigger buttons on the PS4 controller worked as the
bumpers. Ok decent game.
Shooting Zombies, you aim with your head tracking,
and shot by tapping the trackpad on the side of the Oculus device. Wow
I’m actually pretty decent at shoot games now. Though I wonder if holding
my hand up against my head for long period of time will be tiring or not.
Space Ship, my viewpoint is of a person flying the
spaceship from inside. So if I looked left and right I was only looking
left and right inside my ship to look at the controls. To move the ship I
still had to use the controller to move the ship. Having two motions of
moving left and right was confusing and frustrating, you can look left, but
your ship turns really slowly to head left. I thought the controller took
away the illusion from the experience.
In general, graphics were a little pixelated. I could
never get full focus, 80% of the screen would be clear with pockets of fuzzy (I
wonder if it’s because I have astigmatism). Reading text on the screen
wasn’t that great. I had a major problem that every time I started up a
new game, my center had moved. At one point I had to play the game
slanted because my center had rotated.
Oculus Touch
9 ★
The Touch are the duo controllers for the Oculus. Very
Comfortable, pretty easy to use. I played PvP game where the human stands
on a hoverboard in front of a goal line and we throw the disc across the field
to get/save the goal. The rules were a mixture of ultimate Frisbee and
Pong, with a theme similar to Tron.
To move was to lean left and right like on a
snowboard. Because of how much I moved in game, it felt like my play
space was much larger than it really was as I never actually moved my feet from
their placement. In game, the controllers were displayed as your hands,
you moved your arms and wrist in the same motion you would as throwing a
Frisbee. The buttons were used to grasp and let go of the disc.
Playing and watching others play the game, some people were very comfortable
playing the game immediately, while others had difficult time with the throwing
and catching.
Playstation VR -
Harmonix Music VR
9 ★
I used a drawing demo which
you were given a paintbrush with different textures to draw lines that
changed colours and pulsed to the music. You can also move and rotate the
entire drawing around as you drew. As I drew lines around myself I got
myself tangled in the cords. And I hit the playstation employee as I was
drawing. The graphics were decent, the motion was tracked smoothly and
never lost me 👍
Playstation VR - Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin
4★
I was excited for this
game, but this ended up as a disappointment. They gave me a Dualshock 4
Controller. When you have to move your head AND use the analog stick for
moving, that confused the crap out of me. In the game, Raz can put his
mind into other people’s brains and control them. And that’s what it felt
like, I felt like I was inside someone else’s head and I could see through
their eyes, but I couldn’t control them naturally. The controller
completely broke the immersive experience.
Playstation VR –
Resident Evil biohazard
Lots of people hung around
the Resident Evil watching others play. Over and over I heard the
question, “Would you play this game in VR”, and everyone said NO! And
watching one of the players scream randomly I’m so glad I’m not trying either.
Playstation VR -
Statik
10★
Just when I lost faith in
VR with controller experiences, Statik impressed me. Similar to my
thoughts on why I like the Vive controllers (I guess you’ll have to read
farther down), the developers of this game made the placement of your hands on
the controller positioned in the game as part of the experience. Within
the game your hands are locked inside a box bounded by the controller’s
physical size, the PlayStation Move camera tracks the controller so even if you
move your hands with the controller, it follows in the game
appropriately. The graphics were cartoony, so the graphics didn’t seem lacking.
Only 20% of the people who played the game figured out all the 5 puzzles in the
10-minute time frame, YAY for me I got it in 7 ½ minutes. When I was
finished my demo, folks came up to put up a place card that this game won an
award for “Immersion”, I agree it was well deserved.
Playstation VR
Hardware
Look at that brick attacked to the VR headset!
360 Dome
Ok this isn’t quite VR, but it’s rather immersive.
Your whole screen is a dome around you. The small one here hopefully
gives you a good sense of how it looks. But when you are inside a dome
that fits 10-40 other people with things projecting all around you, you get
very lost into the scenery it provides. It’s basically like a
planetarium, but more personal. They weren’t advertising this to be a
home product, but more for corporate events or learning environments. I
watched a film of a skydiver jumping off a plane, and what it looked like to be
spinning free fall, then moved to a flight video from a bird’s view. HD
quality was amazing, and just relaxing to enjoy like an Imax experience.
PicoNeo
Ok this product personally annoyed me. It was a
complete rip off the Oculus line. The way that it was wore and adjusted
on your head, the way that you changed the focus, the quality of the graphics,
the visual look of the device except that it’s orange, game play style,
even the bugs I encountered were the exact same as my Oculus Gear VR
experience! 0 ★ for you for not have a single piece of innovation
from your own work!
HTC Vive with Steam
VR
10★
Painting
program, the lines were
very smooth tracking with no issues, but visually cleaner that the Playstation
VR Harmonix game. The controllers also looked like controllers in the
game, very intuitive to use, a square of metro buttons displayed above the
right controller, and you would rotate your hand to rotate the square for more
button options. The left controller was used to aim and select the button
options, and then for painting. Odd that they made everyone paint with
their left hand, the guy before me switched his “left” and “right” hand to
paint with his physical right hand.
Space
Shooter. I am
standing on a planet, and space ships are flying around in space shooting at
me. My controllers turned into guns (looked similar to the Halo guns)
that were slightly larger than the physical controllers, but my hand was placed
correctly for the triggers, and I could see my reload on my digital counters
like a laser tag gun. I was bombarded with spaceships by level 4 that I
was shooting arms open left and right, Matrix style. I could move around
a lot to avoid the firing.
HTC Vive PugsVR
6★
This is some Kickstarter game for a multiplayer puzzle
game. The logo confused so many people, “is this a dog game? Is this for
dogs? Are you pretending to be a dog”, none of the above. In the
game you move around different rooms to find puzzle pieces. You face the
direction you want to go and push up on the trackpack of the Vive. It was
easy to use, but the motions made me so motion sick I had a lay down after the
demo. The graphics were still in the skeleton stages. The physical
setup was interesting. You can see to avoid the cord problem they have
the device cords above your head. But because were were actually turning
in 360 directions to face which way to move on the map, I ended up moving
around so much that the helpers had to stop me and move me back to center
before I knocked over the whole physical setup.
Naughty America VR
I was so excited to try this, but they had over 60 people in
line and one demo station. Sorry too impatient to wait. When I
walked up, one of the sales folks made sure to mention to me that “we have it
from a Women’s perspective as well”.
3D Rudder
3★
One of those small companies off to the side. They
make a balance board for the VR systems. So if you don’t want to walk or
don’t have the space for it. You can use this board to simulate moving
directions including up and down. To move up you have to lean your left
foot forward and right foot backwards. It was kind akward.
Vuzix
4★
This was a major disappointment. I got two experiences
here
3D content, plugged into a PS4 and playing a 3D video
game that was made for those oh so popular 3D TVs. It looked like I was
looking at a 3DS super close to my face, yet I could still see the screen’s
edges very clearly.
VR Experience, it plays OSVR (universal open source
VR ecosystem) content.
The head tracking was good, the graphics quality was actually better than
PlaystationVR, but the fact I could see the bounding box of the screen just made
me feel I was watching a movie theatre screen.
Immerex Cinema
Unfortunately, I was too busy running to a demo appointment
I wasn’t able to try this out. From what I quickly gather, it looks like
they are focusing on video, not gaming.
That's the end of VR. There was of course lots of other things that happened outside VR. If you want to check out my other pictures of the other things to see at E3, check them out on my facebook
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