Originally launched on HTC Vive in August 2016, Sólfar Studios virtual reality (VR) experience Everest VR then came to Oculus Rift earlier this year and today the title has now made its way to PlayStation VR.
Available from the PlayStation Store for $14.99 USD, the PlayStation VR version of Everest VR will feature all of the updates the PC version has acquired such as ‘God Mode’ which offers players sweeping views of Mt. Everest and the surrounding mountain ranges at scales ranging from 1500x to 1x resolution. Other additions include 18 different historical expedition routes to God Mode, including the 1953 British Expedition when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first successful summit of Everest.
“When we set out to develop EVEREST VR, our mission was to traverse a new frontier for virtual reality,” said Kjartan Pierre Emilsson, co-founder and CEO of Sólfar Studios. “We wanted to push the boundaries of what VR technology is capable of doing and create an immersive experience so realistic that it evokes an emotional response. Since its initial release for HTC Vive last year, we have continued to expand upon EVEREST VR with exciting new content. We’re thrilled to be able to have PlayStation VR users summit Mt. Everest in VR, starting today.”
Created in partnership with Nordic visual effects house RVX, Everest VR uses photogrammetry techniques and multi-resolution shading, to create this first-person experience by piecing together thousands of high resolution images of the mountain range to create a definitive CGI model of the mountain. They then generated a 3D mesh and textures made to measure for the demands of a real-time VR application, to give the user a true sense of presence as they scale to the top of the worlds highest peak.
For any further updates on EVEREST VR, keep reading VRFocus.