Flying a spaceship, exploring a dungeon as a knight, and exploring the ocean’s depths were among the dozens of virtual reality demos at the Oculus Connect conference this weekend. These prototypes–some of which used the latest Crescent Bay headset–show the promise of what’s to come.
“This is a prototype, a lot of one-off hardware. Everything in the consumer product is going to be the same as this or better in many cases,” says Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR. “But this is the first time that you can deliver a pretty powerful sense of presence reliably across a wide variety of content.”
Here are four of the Oculus Rift developers I encountered that achieve “presence” and are taking an innovative approach to virtual game design.
While most studios and indie developers are making first-person experiences for Oculus Rift, Playful Corp. decided to go third-person. Your view in Lucky’s Tale is looking down at a colorful world as you move a cartoon fox below. Paul Bettner, the co-creator of the well-known game Words With Friends, founded Playful and is working on a full release of the platforming game. He sees Crescent Bay as Oculus taking that first real step toward a new era in tech.
“In technology , we have different inflection points. When you are on one side of it, it feels like we will never get to the other side of it. But once you get over that hurdle, you never look back. This is just how it’s going to be now,” Bettner tells Co.Labs. “Since the very first DK1, they had gotten over some hurdles, it still had a ton of compromises and issues , but it was able to invoke a sense of presence. And now with Crescent Bay, they have just nailed that.”
Read the full article at Co.Labs.