Oculus Rift

[Lions]

I got the chance to try the Game of Thrones Oculus Rift Ascend the Wall experience yesterday and it was pretty sweet. For those of you that don't know, the Oculus Rifts is a virtual reality gaming headset. You step into a cage and put on the unit and because it fills your entire visual field, you feel like you're right there in the game. It's a 4-D experience, which means that the floor vibrates appropriately and you can feel the wind. I got transported up an elevator to the top of the wall, then sent out on a platform overlooking a huge drop. Thankfully, it stops right at the edge. Then they start shooting at you. Flaming arrows come whizzing by your head so close you feel like you could catch them. At the very end, I got shoved in the back by one of the staffers I had been joking with before I got in, which completely disoriented me and made me feel like I went right off the platform!

It was quite fun and I can see why people are excited by stuff like this. That said, you're going to want to play in a padded room if you do anything more than just walk around.

[Simon]

Great, but how many games are supporting Oculus right now? I cant buy this thing for 350$ and play any game (FPS at least) i want with it.
Or can i?

[John]

Ooh, a hands-on report on Oculus! Very exciting to hear that it met with your approval! There are so many potential utilities for this. I remember being completely convinced back in 1992 that virtual reality was right around the corner, and that we'd all be playing VR games in our homes' VR rooms by the new century. Maybe this will be the start of that long-delayed VR revolution.

Great, but how many games are supporting Oculus right now? I cant buy this thing for 350$ and play any game (FPS at least) i want with it.
Or can i?

There really isn't much you can do with it at the moment, I'm afraid. The current builds are more for designers, directors, and developers than for end-users. One notable exception in the gaming world is Elite: Dangerous, which comes out on December 16. That game supports the Oculus Rift. I have read a few reports on its implementation, and it's supposed to be quite cool. You're strapped into a cockpit in the game, so that neatly gets around the disorienting aspect of looking down and seeing legs that aren't your own. Here's a video showing of a bit of Elite gameplay with the Oculus:

[Lions]

Sadly, I'm not really the most informed on this. I'm not a gamer and had never watched a minute of GoT prior to this. To me, the big thing is that it really does make you feel like you're in the game in a way that a traditional screen never can because it takes up your entire visual field. I think this will be true even without the 4D experience of a vibrating floor or a force feedback controller. I'll also say that the unit was quite comfortable to wear for the short period I had it on. You can quickly lose yourself in the experience and if people think gamers get addicted too easily today, I expect VR sets like these will raise that tendency quite a bit. There better be some sort of timer you can set to remind yourself to return to the land of carbon based lifeforms.