Category: Sixer VR

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Football Field-Sized VR World Created In Prototype

The development of inside-out tracking and spatial mapping has opened up the possibility that virtual reality (VR) could be larger in scale, letting users experience truly ‘free roam’ VR without being limited by the position of tracking sensors. An experimental VR experience is trying to explore the limits of this technology.

Two developers named Jeremy Kirshbaum and Alexander Goldman have created a VR world called ‘Return to Grindelind’, a proof-of-concept prototype of a world-scale VR videogame that is roughly the size of a football field.

The experience runs on the HTC Vive Focus, the standalone headset that uses inside-out positional tracking. The story of the title features players taking the role of adventurers returned to their home town and finding it pillaged, and then searching for clues as to what happened and who is responsible.

As a prototype its is graphically fairly simplistic, but the main feature is not graphics or gameplay, but rather the ability for players to move around the VR environment in a 1:1 scale without using teleportation or smooth locomotion, instead physically walking around to explore the virtual town.

Return to Grindelind comes from Sixer VR, a VR research and prototyping studio headed up by Kirshbaum and Goldman. The project is not intended for market, but instead about experimenting with what is possible with the technology and what it is like being in a world-scale VR space.

“We found that the user experience and ‘feel’ of world-scale VR is transformatively different than conventional 6DoF. Walking tetherlessly is more than just a mechanical capability. The ability to see a far off thing and simply go toward it makes the virtual feel all the more real; a castle a half-mile away is actually a half mile away,” they wrote. “When you take off the headset, you almost feel that the virtual environment is still there, albeit invisible. In my experience, world-scale brings VR immersion to a new level.”

A video demonstration of the prototype is available to view below. For future coverage on new developments in world-scale VR, keep checking back with VRFocus.

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This Prototype World-scale VR Game is the Size of a Football Field

With recent advancements in inside-out tracking on standalone VR headsets, the tantalizing possibility of ‘world-scale’ VR experiences—those unhindered by limited tracking volumes or even physical barriers—is coming into focus. A pair of developers have created a prototype VR game that’s played across an entire football field.

‘Return to Grindelind’, as its called by creators Jeremy Kirshbaum and Alexander Goldman, is a rough prototype of a world-scale VR game that’s designed to fit within a football field. Running on the HTC Vive Focus, a standalone VR headset with inside-out positional tracking, the game has players returning to the pillaged town of their youth, searching for clues as to what happened.

Yes it’s crude, but the graphics and the gameplay aren’t the point; rather than artificial locomotion like teleporting or sliding around the virtual world, in ‘Return to Grindelind’ you physically walk an equal distance in the real world to navigate the virtual town while searching for clues and advancing the narrative.

Image courtesy Dwayne Bent (CC BY-SA 2.0)

While the prototype gameplay amounts to little more than walking from A to B and a quick scavenger hunt, it’s a straightforward demonstration of a unique range of experiences now possible on low-cost hardware which previously would have been significantly more expensive (imagine outfitting an area the size of a football field with all the rigging and sensors needed for external tracking).

‘Return to Grindelind’ is the latest experiment from Sixer VR, a VR research and prototyping studio headed by Kirshbaum and Goldman. The project is not about bringing a game to market, the pair notes in their post about the experiment, but about understanding what it would feel like to be in a world-scale VR space.

“[…] we found that the user experience and ‘feel’ of worldscale VR is transformatively different than conventional 6DoF. Walking tetherlessly is more than just a mechanical capability. The ability to see a far off thing and simply go toward it makes the virtual feel all the more real; a castle a half-mile away is actually a half mile away,” they wrote. “When you take off the headset, you almost feel that the virtual environment is still there, albeit invisible. In my experience, worldscale brings VR immersion to a new level.”

But the project was also an avenue for thinking about the practical considerations of such an experience, like how to keep players safe, and whether or not such a large space would even be available to players in the first place.

“Whether other designers and the public feel the benefits outweigh the risk, or if worldscale VR will be relegated to pre-built and designed arenas, remains to be seen,” the pair wrote. “Perhaps new forms of public spaces will emerge. […] However worldscale VR evolves, this conversation—around using VR in public spaces, design responsibilities, and social etiquette—is one we need to start having now, before the epic fail videos start rolling in.”

We’re probably still a long way from purpose-built arenas specifically for world-scale VR usage, but Kirshbaum and Goldman make a good point—it’s worth starting to think about this, not just in the context of VR, but also in AR which could have us seamlessly interacting with both the real world and a virtual world that’s mapped directly to it.

The post This Prototype World-scale VR Game is the Size of a Football Field appeared first on Road to VR.