- 注册
- 2002-10-07
- 消息
- 402,224
- 荣誉分数
- 76
- 声望点数
- 0
I’m at the bottom of a tall coral reef, surrounded by a school of jellyfish. I look up to a turtle floating above me, but he’s just out of my reach. Scanning the area for other sea creatures, I spot a little fish swimming my way.
I run toward it with my hand out, but instead I collide into a wall.
“You gotta watch out for that,” says the virtual reality attendant, who noted earlier that the dents in the wall came from unsuspecting gamers such as myself.
I’m at Colony VR, Ottawa’s first virtual reality studio, and I’m trying out theBlu, an ocean simulator and VR demo.
For about two-and-a-half years, virtual reality goggles have been on the consumer market, and the technology has developed into a booming industry. In 2014, Facebook purchased Oculus, a leading VR tech company, for $2 billion. As investors pour money into the technology, it is becoming a little more affordable.
“You can get (the goggles) for about half as much as we originally got them” two years ago, says Stefan Scherer of Colony. At the time, Scherer paid around $1,400 for the goggles I wore. Now, HTC Vive, the goggles and controller setup Colony uses, costs around $800 in Canada. And that’s just the gear. With a computer powerful enough to smoothly run the games, Scherer says the setup I used costs around $6,000.
VR arcades have been popping up in Canada and around the world. The gear is also beginning to break into homes, but it’s still too expensive for most.
At Colony on Beech Street in Little Italy, you rent a “hex,” a 12-by-12-foot play space, for $40 per hour. With a few friends, the experience is fairly affordable. You have to take turns, but half the fun is watching people stumble around and flail.
The games themselves don’t feel like standard video games. They are far more physical and intuitive. To pick up a bow, I don’t have to press a button on a keyboard — I simply walk up to it, bend over and pick it up. To fire at the baddies invading my castle, I hold the bow out and pull my arrows back. To aim, I just, well, aim.
The experience is unreal (no pun intended), and the illusion of depth is convincing. In theBlu, I peered over the rock I was perched on, and my stomach actually turned looking at the depths below.
“Your conscious brain knows it’s not real,” explains Scherer, but your unconscious brain still reacts with panic. The immersion is unlike anything I’ve experienced.
I can’t help but imagine how people will talk 100 years from now about our early reactions to VR. Maybe they’ll scoff at us, just as we do when we think about flip phones or black and white TVs.
Your inner luddite or Black Mirror fan may balk at the prospect of VR domination. But as companies like Google and Facebook invest billions into VR, the sophistication of these games is predicted to skyrocket, as well as the number of applications for the technology in our daily lives, from entertainment to the workplace.
Colony also does research on VR technology and hosts meet-ups for enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. For the average Joe like myself, though, the games will satisfy my VR appetite — for now.
查看原文...
I run toward it with my hand out, but instead I collide into a wall.
“You gotta watch out for that,” says the virtual reality attendant, who noted earlier that the dents in the wall came from unsuspecting gamers such as myself.
I’m at Colony VR, Ottawa’s first virtual reality studio, and I’m trying out theBlu, an ocean simulator and VR demo.
For about two-and-a-half years, virtual reality goggles have been on the consumer market, and the technology has developed into a booming industry. In 2014, Facebook purchased Oculus, a leading VR tech company, for $2 billion. As investors pour money into the technology, it is becoming a little more affordable.
“You can get (the goggles) for about half as much as we originally got them” two years ago, says Stefan Scherer of Colony. At the time, Scherer paid around $1,400 for the goggles I wore. Now, HTC Vive, the goggles and controller setup Colony uses, costs around $800 in Canada. And that’s just the gear. With a computer powerful enough to smoothly run the games, Scherer says the setup I used costs around $6,000.
VR arcades have been popping up in Canada and around the world. The gear is also beginning to break into homes, but it’s still too expensive for most.
At Colony on Beech Street in Little Italy, you rent a “hex,” a 12-by-12-foot play space, for $40 per hour. With a few friends, the experience is fairly affordable. You have to take turns, but half the fun is watching people stumble around and flail.
The games themselves don’t feel like standard video games. They are far more physical and intuitive. To pick up a bow, I don’t have to press a button on a keyboard — I simply walk up to it, bend over and pick it up. To fire at the baddies invading my castle, I hold the bow out and pull my arrows back. To aim, I just, well, aim.
The experience is unreal (no pun intended), and the illusion of depth is convincing. In theBlu, I peered over the rock I was perched on, and my stomach actually turned looking at the depths below.
“Your conscious brain knows it’s not real,” explains Scherer, but your unconscious brain still reacts with panic. The immersion is unlike anything I’ve experienced.
I can’t help but imagine how people will talk 100 years from now about our early reactions to VR. Maybe they’ll scoff at us, just as we do when we think about flip phones or black and white TVs.
Your inner luddite or Black Mirror fan may balk at the prospect of VR domination. But as companies like Google and Facebook invest billions into VR, the sophistication of these games is predicted to skyrocket, as well as the number of applications for the technology in our daily lives, from entertainment to the workplace.
Colony also does research on VR technology and hosts meet-ups for enthusiasts and entrepreneurs. For the average Joe like myself, though, the games will satisfy my VR appetite — for now.
查看原文...
