Killing Zombies In VR With the Latest Version of Project Holodeck At E3 2014

muterobert (2927951) writes with an update on the full immersion VR system from Project Holodeck (now renamed Survios). The system combines an Oculus DK2 with external sensors to make a fully immersive 8x'8' space "Ben Lang from Road to VR goes hands on and heads in with virtual reality technology company Survios' newest version of untethered VR system 'Prime 3'. He moves around the virtual space, holding and reloading weapons as you would in real life. 'At one point while playing, I was wielding the shotgun with two hands, with the table of weapons was on my right side. Several zombies were approaching and I needed a bit more fire power. I dropped the shotgun, reached over with my right hand to grab the tommy gun off the table, then virtually tossed it from my right hand to my left hand (because I'm a lefty), then pulled my pistol out of the holster with my right hand and continued to shoot both weapons.'" The article has a video, and it almost makes me think it's what being in the metaverse would be like.

!Porn

[Thanshin]

It is not porn.

As long as it keeps being not porn it won't have the required money to put one on every living room.

Someone smart and a bit rich must make the porn version of this and become much richer and famous.

(Unless someone finds a way to turn this into an exercise machine.)

Re:cool but bulky

[RZR_LZR]

Likely to get really immersive gaming you will need a lot of tech. I've been following this tech fairly loosely, but here's a price range for what I've seen (including this product):

1. 1. Omni [virtuix.com] motion "trackpad" -- $500 (or similar product)
2. 2. Oculus [oculusvr.com] rift headset -- $350 (devkit2 pricing)
3. 3. Razer Hydra or similar -- $140 (priced from here [pcmag.com])
4. 4. playstation [playstation.com] move motion controller -- $70
5. 5. at least commodity laptop worth of components to power it all -- $450 (based on middle tier notebook here [newegg.com])
6. 6. At least basic surround sound or decent headphones -- $90 (here [newegg.com] and here [newegg.com])
7. 7. A decent gaming computer ~$1500

So that brings the overall price to ~$3,100 if you don't already have a gaming box and ~$1,600 if you do. Plus the const of your living room. This is totally in price for a lot of people. It's all available in hardware form now (to varying degrees of "done").

The major problem is what you pointed out: it will eat your living room/den. These costs and tech are also only for one player and you might get interference/tracking issues with more than on person in the same room. Only people who have solo/networked gaming as their primary form of entertainment will be willing to to make this trade off (that still is a lot of people). BUT, it's super affordable from a business aspect. Take a building, divide it into sound-proofed closets. Put one of these units into each of said closets. Have a desirable set of games (could even be one a la LaserQuest) that people want to play (or with telepresence bots: virtual tourism! (project tango [google.com]?)) and it's really something to get in on. You could also see it used easily in therapies, spas (walk through a beautiful garden), military training (not as good as the real thing, but decent),and whole lot more.

That said, businesses won't be willing to invest in this without content Just like 3D movies and TVs, the life and death of an entertainment technology depends on the content available to it. There are a lot of companies jumping on the VR bandwagon right now. I think there will be a good set of initial IP that launches with these products or it will integrate with previous games (Skyrim, etc.), but there has to be something that makes you throw your money at them.

Overall, it's getting cheaper, faster and better. I think within 5 years everyone will know someone who has VR in their house.