A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to try Virtual Reality for the first time. I had tried Google Cardboard before, but I don’t consider that true Virtual Reality. The system that I tried was an Oculus Rift using touch controls and playing their First Contact demo, and I have to say, It was amazing.
So let me start at the beginning. I have thought the idea of Virtual Reality was cool for a long time, having grown up in the 80 – 90’s we had lots of shows that promised an amazing virtual world that you could enter, what we got was things like the Nintendo Virtual Boy. I did not feel like I was in another world, I felt queasy. Back then the tech just wasn’t there to make a consumer VR experience that was truly immersive, that has changed. With the Oculus Rift I was able to look around my virtual space by moving my head as well as physically move my body, at one point in the demo I physically crouched down to look under a virtual desk, FYI there was a sticker under there.
Looking around at things in VR is really cool, and I think that is where it might have ended if it wasn’t for the touch controllers. Desktop VR like the Rift and HTC’s Vive have controllers that are tracked in VR space to represent your digital hands. This gave me the ability to interact with the virtual environment in some pretty neat ways of which the demo takes advantage of. I was able to pick up “floppy” disks and insert them into a computer, pick up a dart gun and shoot at targets or anything else in the room, you can even pluck the darts off off and take a closer look at them. When my time with the demo was over it seemed like I had been gone for a lot longer than my allotted five minutes. It was then that I was hooked, “That was amazing” was the first thing I said to my wife who was standing by watching me. She had a bit of a skeptical look on her face, I’m sure to her I looked funny waving my arms around but I didn’t care. Virtual Reality had finally come.