Gadgetory

I'm TC sonic with the verge and we're here at GDC 2013 I'm about to try the oculus rift development kit for my first time we're also about to check out Hawkin which hasn't been shown off before today let's jump in this is insane oh man this is incredible this is like this is the most bizarre thing I've ever done I've never played anything like this before why are you guys here what do you guys doing at GDC this year what we're doing right now is shipping developer kits and we're trying to get these two people who want to develop games in virtual reality so GDC is filled with developers lots of indie developers and we think that showing these people what VR is like is that is a really critical part of being successful what types of developers do you really want on board for this what kind of experiences are you trying to create out of the game you know to be honest we don't know at this point we're making these developer kits because we don't know what kind of experiences are the best experiences out there what's happening is we're getting interest from developers who are saying hey I think that what I have could be a good VR experience i really want to give this a shot and so we want to make sure those people are getting the developer kids they need so maybe next year this you know the same time of year maybe i'll have a better answer as to you know what kind of experiences should do we want to be seeing more of on the rift oh my god i feel like i'm actually in the air right now see this is the kind of game I want to play I just want to fly to be great for a flight simulator I think this would be unbelievable for exploration games you know something like I don't even a journey or you know games that haven't really even been conceived of yet imagine playing missed on this thing you know actually having to look around at your environment definitely some exciting prospects for you know non violent games exploration games puzzle games what about non games I mean there's virtual reality is using a lot of different applications PTSD therapy for instance I used to work in a military lab and I was one of the projects that we work on yep there's posttraumatic stress disorder treatment for soldiers that's that's something that's been an ongoing view our research field for years there's people who want to use it for education people want to use it for police and fire training so that you can train for certain situations and how to react to them without actually putting people in harm's way there's people who want to use this for telepresence tell a robotic so they can operate machines at a distance but feel like they're present at the scene there's all kinds of applications for virtual reality beyond gaming but gaming is certainly the single biggest one all right so this is a bare-bones racing game demo it's really weird that i can feel feel the steering wheel but not see my hands on the steering on the game it also feels like I'm in a little balsa wood car but that's okay should go fast oh god this is this is sickening oh I'm definitely yeah this is a this is way different from Hawking you're going a lot faster I could see this being insane an actual game like Forza or need to speed or something but I'm definitely I can feel my stomach just turning oh god I feel like my body wants to move but I can't whoa oh my god I just spun the car out have we've been talking developers I mean it seems like there's a challenge in like for instance team fortress 2 when you have a character like the Scout that runs 40 miles an hour that's going to make people sick potentially how do you grapple with getting VR players and non VR players in the same game together is that something you've you have concern about is that something developers have been trying to figure out you know tf2 it's a tf2 zone is a is a title that Valve used so they could collect these kinds of metrics they want to see how people perform against each other you know NVR a bait on bit as opposed to out of ER they want to see much kind of what kind of classes people choose in VR what maps do they like how long do they play what tends to make them stop playing it's too early to say you know what to try to solve problems about how to have you know basically competitive parity between normal players and dr players because one of the problems is that traditional interfaces like a keyboard and mouse they're super human you can do things you can instantly accelerate full-forward you can spin 360 degrees and tenth of a second those are things you can't possibly do in real life you know you're using your natural body to move so that I think there's always going to be a disconnect I don't think you're ever going to have the same performance between a VR player and keyboard mouse monitor player you might have different advantages and different disadvantages but balancing those is going to take a lot of really long time so I don't think we're close to that it could just be for me but it seems like racing games are going to be sickening for sure and I could see this you know any game where you're really going fast will be nuts all right I can't oh oh