Category: VR Experience Review S19

Going to the VR Park after our growing knowledge and interactions with Unity VR the past semester made me appreciate and see the games through a different perspective and appreciate and notice the little things I wouldn’t have otherwise.

The way the games (at least most of them) were presented was that the player was strapped to a seat in both real and virtual life which helped in immersing the user in the game without facing the issues of having the player walk out of frame or break through virtual walls

The games that included physical movements that I tried out were the maze game and the multiplayer game fighting zombies. The maze game had physical walls built into the area so even if the player tried to walk through the virtual walls they physically won’t be able to due to the barriers. On the other hand the zombie multiplayer game although the only barrier to limit the player was only located in the virtual world, but due to the scary zombies running and charging towards you, your “fake” barrier would actually prevent the zombies from reaching you, thus making the player realize where they are is actually the safest place to be, and this barrier is protecting them

The trip to the VR park was the best class trip I’ve had so far. One of the games that I’ve loved the most was the hologate. It is a game where you are on a mission to clear the zombies. It was very interesting since it was a multiplayer game. Up to 4 players can game and this game is based on team work. People can shoot each other to heal, and without that it is very hard to survive.

Here is a small video about the game.

Another thing that I’ve noticed in the PVRK was that they had the same problem as we had which is the intersection of the base stations. Craig got really interested about it and he took several pictures of the base station covers. Unfortunately i don’t have a picture of it, but it can definitelly be a solution to our problem.

While fun, I didn’t find the park to challenge the VR technology or push its limits. One of my major disappointments in the park is the lack of an omni-directional treadmill. In my opinion the biggest limitation of VR is the lack of free movement. While the solution to that, an omni-directional treadmill, is not feasible for a home VR setup, it should be more than feasible for the world’s largest VR park.

One experience that I particularly enjoyed was Hologate. While there was nothing revolutionary about it, as it was a straight forward 4-player HTC Vive game, but the in game voice chat and being able to see the other players in game was a big factor helping immersion. It was one of the few games that integrated audio into the game play, which is a big contributing factor for me

Another experience that integrated audio was RobocomVR. The pod that turns 360 degrees along with some up and down movement was absolutely excellent for immersion, however the game play was extremely repetitive and did not invite you to use the full motion available to the pod. Additionally, the amount of explosions was too much at times, even for the computer running the game as it often stuttered.

In fact the lack of computing power was a recurring theme for many of the games in the park. Whether it was stuttering or incredibly low-resolution textures.

One thing I did like about the park is incorporating G-forces into games like in Burj drop and the roller coaster. It is infinitely easier to believe you are falling from the Burj if your body is also telling you that you are indeed falling.

All in all, the Park was technologically bland and truly lacks innovation, but it was still fun for a few hours.

Last Friday, we went to the VR park in Dubai for a class trip. Since we had been talking about the rides in the VR park and the behind-the-scene tour, I thought that it would be like an amusement park, which has a lot of roller coasters and trains which you could ride on, and the behind-the-scene experience will allow us to understand their efforts to sustain and regulate such a massive place. Unlike what I expected, the PVRK in Dubai was way smaller and looked just like an arcade. It was dark and noise, and we could barely hear other people talking. The only roller coaster they have looked so small that I don’t even think we would be able to have a ride on it. I got a bit disappointed at that point.

However, as we put the headsets on, the whole situation changed: you see a new world in the headset, and the sound effect was so real and you can hear it so clearly from the headset. I realized how wrong I was: the point of VR was to create an equally engaging experience even if the equipments (like the rollercoaster) did not seem to be legit. My favorite experience was the shooting game, where you get to drive a spaceship and fight with the enemy troops. When I first sit on the machine and put on the VR headset, I didn’t really feel immersed in the game. To me, it didn’t seem to be different from those fancy arcade games where you get to drive a car and shoot zombies. Then, when the spaceship I was driving got sucked in by a tunnel and started to climb up the tunnel, the seat changed the orientation so that I really felt that I was part of the spaceship. It was that moment when I started to feel immersed in the experience.

When shooting the enemy troops, I actually felt the backlash of the machine gun, and thus it was so hard to control the spaceship: it was shaking a lot. The visual effects were so real: I could actually tell by the lighting of the explosion how big the exploded spaceship was. The sound effect was also 3D: when I turn around, I could hear the explosion and shooting coming from behind. Overall, it was such an immersive experience where I felt blended in with the spaceship I was driving, and really felt like part of the game. And I think I was doing well in the game. Got 29,000 points XD

1) While at the VR Park in Dubai, take note of those aspects of the experience that feel particularly immersive and why. Are you engaged in the premise of the experience? What is your role and what do you get to do? Does light or sound play a distinctive part in making the experience compelling? Write about this as a blog post and be ready to share in class on Monday.

Last Friday, our class visited the VR Park (https://www.vrparkdubai.com/) in Dubai. For me, this was my first time going to a VR park in general, and so I was excited to see what was awaiting me.

The attraction I felt the most immersive was the “Dubai Drone” and the “VR Maze.” In the “Dubai Drone,” the player rides a roller coaster while putting the VR headset on. The roller coaster here is the drone. What was impressive was that the images in the VR perfectly matched the direction and path of the roller coaster. When the roller coaster made a turn, there was something visually in the VR which also required or prompted a turn. Because all of the scenes in this attraction had bright light, it posed a positive image of how Dubai will keep on developing in the future. The music also played a big role in emphasizing how exciting and optimistic Dubai’s future will be. Here, my role was simply sitting on the roller coaster/drone and viewing the futuristic scene of Dubai.

On the other hand, in the “VR Maze,” the player had more of an agency in controlling the speed to which the player in the VR moved, as well as which direction to move towards. This was because the player was not sitting in an attraction/roller coaster that had a specific route and pathway, but rather the player had to move in the VR space using his/her own feet. While it was a maze in the VR headset, when seeing the physical player space, it was simply a small box with a few walls placed in it. Before playing this game, I was watching other people play the game. Therefore, I kind of knew what I was expecting, and yet, I was quite shocked and scared when entering the VR maze world. The scene took place in a dungeon and there were skeleton skulls and spooky-looking objects. The dim lighting added to the environment and made it a spooky experience (at least for me because I am scared of ghosts, skulls, and anything that is “scary”). The music also added to this because I felt as if I was really inside a maze dungeon, trying to figure out a way out/escape.   

My trip to the VR Park was a very interesting one to say the least. When we first arrived, I was super excited and amazed by the number of different rides available. Along with a couple of other people, my initial thought was “why aren’t there more people here?!” Everything looked so fun and I imagined it to be bustling with people. But funnily enough, halfway through my time there, I slowly realized why this was. There are definitely drawbacks to this new technology and

My favorite experience was the Burj drop. It was the first ride that I went on and at this point I was filled with excitement and expecting the best to come. I put on my headset and immediately saw what you would see if you were up in Burj Khalifa. I was apparently with another man and by the look of his helmet and outfit, we were doing some construction work up in the air. The ride began and we were going up and down at varying speed. I felt very immersed in it because the movement felt very real. What I was seeing in the headset corresponded to how my body felt, which added to the adrenaline. For me, the light and the sound did play a role in making the experience feel fuller, but neither of it was extraordinary.

However, I realized this wasn’t the case for some other rides and even though my vision was aided by movement in the ride, I wasn’t as immersed and was even thrown out of it. I think the key was to find the right balance between the two – if there’s too much of any one aspect, it immediately takes me out of the experience. Most of the other rides, for example, had way too much movement. My body was being thrown from side to side, and it was very hard to focus on the game as I began feeling dizzy and sick. the headset also felt very heavy so when there were sharp turns in some of the rides, I felt a lot of pain and pressure on my neck. Even some of the props that we had to hold, like guns, were quite heavy and holding them for prolonged periods of time would tire me out midday.

Overall, I had fun going on different rides and I had never experienced anything like it. However, I doubt I’ll be back anytime soon, given the headaches, neck strains, and dizziness the rides caused!

The best experience I had at the VR Park in Dubai was the Hologate game, Zombyte. I think it was the same for many of my classmates.

It was the experience that was the most ‘Alternate’, depicting a post apocalyptic zombie world where a computer virus takes over the human population’s neural enhancements. As a fan of good world building, to me, most of the experiences I saw that were close to reality like the drone or the Burj drop were fun but still a lot less interesting.

One of the ways in which it was very successful was in making the use of the headsets and equipment was a part of the narrative. We are using our neural enhancements to remotely control fighter robots and hold off the zombie horde, with the danger of the virus spreading to us across the network. We were also handed controllers that were built in to rifles that we held and controlled like real rifles.

The placement of the players back to back, but able to look around and see each other and support each other, and linked headsets to allow us to talk to each other worked well to create a sense of team work. We tried to have each other’s back. Enemies approaching and attacking from multiple sides and angles kept us moving around, sometimes ducking down and shooting over the barrier.

The atmosphere of the game is charged, urgent and terrifying. The dim, artificial neon lighting and the shadows cast from the buildings from which the zombies emerged were effective in creating a sense of a cyber punk world as well as a sense of sci fi horror. I don’t remember if there was music, but that just means it worked so seamlessly that I didn’t notice.

I would totally play it again.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to visit PVRK in Dubai Mall. I personally enjoyed the experience as it was a re-defined version of your typical amusement park, which strives to entertain the audience through interactive games, but with the added bonus that most games would immerse the users through virtual reality. From all the games in the park, I really enjoyed the Burj Drop. In this game, you were placed in the shoes of a construction worker who is falling from the tallest building in the world and you experience the same fear and release of endorphins as the game would simulate the falling experience by replicating the falling motion. The motion, coupled with the VR headset, made the experience very engaging and believable. Personally, I thought that the premise of creating a VR amusement park to be an interesting one as it uses this technology to offer something that most amusement parks don’t: an extra layer of interactivity and immersion as offered and allowed by VR. After playing most games in PVRK, I took with me two important, yet juxtaposing takeaways:

1. How Virtual Reality is still in its infancy

Despite that fact that most games were definitely immersive and fun, there is still some limitations on the immersion which I couldn’t leave aside as I was partaking in such experiences. There is the limitation of space as users can’t really freely roam on the Virtual World and are confined by the bounds delimited by the creators of the game. There is also a lack of identity in the virtual world. Usually, most games put the wearer of the VR headset into the body of a predefined avatar, which can throw the user off as this avatar will most likely have different physical characteristics as the user.Finally, VR games are limited in time. Most of games did not last more than 4-5 minutes.

1. The promise that Virtual Reality offers

Despite the mishaps mentioned above, the VR experiences in PVRK really point to a future where Virtual Reality can have an all-pervasive impact in the life of the average human. The fact that VR specialists can already create simulations where humans can have their eyes, ears, and sometimes even their sense of touch engaged speaks miles of the progress that has been made in the area and the promise VR has as a means of entertainment.

All in all, after creating our own VR experiences through the Unity Game Engine, it was a nice change of pace to contemplate industry-level VR simulations and use such to learn from as we continue with the process of developing our final projects.

I felt strange walking around the VR Park as I used to go there with my cousins a lot when it was previously an arcade. The arcade had the exact same layout as the VR park: the roller coaster, the Burj Drop, the dune bashers attractions were nearly the same as in the arcade, but were now a completely different experience with the addition of VR. Thus, these VR experiences were designed for a currently existing physical experience. I remember riding the old roller coaster quite well: one is able to see the track and have the thrill of anticipating a drop, etc. However, there was a certain dimension(?) added with VR, a stronger narrative with a stronger role for the viewer. On the old roller coaster, the focus lay in the physical infrastructure whereas in VR the physical infrastructure is not the focus, but rather, it complements the VR narrative to give a stronger sense of storytelling.

My favorite experiences were the VR maze and the zombie shooting game. The VR maze was a really powerful individual experience that was well-engineered with a meaningful narrative. The frequent shooting of enemies with a bow and arrow as well as the collecting of the treasures created consistent levels of achievement to keep the viewer emotionally invested in the experience. The sound contributed to the ambience and also provided feedback for the viewer whenever they successfully shot an enemy. The four person zombie shooting game was also incredible for the immersive experience it provided. The sound contributed to this immersion as it made the zombies feel closer and more pressing. Additionally, having the headset and being able to hear the other team members made you feel part of a team and made it that much more important to protect the base from the zombies. One interesting aspect of the zombie game was that it sort of broke the “fourth wall” or whatever the VR equivalent is. As the game mode switched from training to the introduction to the actual game, you could see the grids and the VR system booting the new mode, making you aware that this was an artificial experience. Despite that, the game portion was still immersive.

It was also interesting to see the representation of the roles we took on in this VR world. In some of the rides, like Dune Bashers or Burj Drop, I appeared to be a white man which introduced a disconnect towards my role in the experience. In most of the attractions, however, no part of my body could be seen which actually made me feel more immersed in the experience. Another challenge of having a VR experience at such a large scale is the potential for technical difficulties. For instance, when I went on Dune Bashers, there seemed to be an error so that my VR experience conveyed that I was stationary in a garage but the physical experience was dune bashing. That disconnect between the VR and the physical narrative created such nausea in me and made me feel as if it were an artificial experience.

Out of the experiences that involved a VR headset at VR Park, I tried out the roller coaster, the dune surfing ride, a couple of the sports games, the maze game, and the four player zombie shooting game. The hierarchy I would assign each of these games in terms of level of immersion (number 1 being the highest level) would be:

1. Maze game
2. Four player zombie shooting game
3. Sports games
4. Roller coaster
5. Dune surfing ride

Firstly, it is important to note the difference between immersion and presence, because the order would be very different if we were talking about presence. To me, immersion is about how involved the player feels within the experience, in addition to presence. Presence is about building up a cohesive environment, whereas immersion is about how engaged you are within that environment. The experiences that felt the most immersive were the ones in which the user had some sort of mission within the experience. This explains the first three items on my list: the maze game, the zombie shooting game, and the sports games all gave the player some sort of mission or task, whereas with the roller coaster and dune surfing ride, the player was a passive observer.

As for what makes the maze game the most immersive experience, it is about the construction of the physical space. There were physical walls built that corresponded with walls within the game – being able to actually touch these walls within the game made the experience more immersive.

Next on the list is the four player zombie shooting game – the fact that you could share this experience with other users and the fact that the controller shaped like a gun did a lot for the immersion aspect of the game. However, I would still consider the maze game to be more immersive perhaps because you were able to move around more freely. There is something about the ability to walk around a space, even if it is a constrained maze with a set narrative or path, that makes the experience more “real.” There are corners to duck behind to add to the combat experience, whereas in the zombie shooting game your only mode of defense was shooting a gun.

In terms of the use of light and sound, I think all of these experiences made good use of these tools, especially the zombie shooting game. They generally served to set the mood of the experience, such as zombie sound effects and dark lighting for the scary setting. What was especially compelling was that there were microphones for each of the headsets, allowing the players to talk to one another. However, this had both positive and negative effects on the level of immersion of the experience. It was positive because you got to share the experience with other people, and the sounds of other players shouting into the microphones added to a combat-like experience. However, there was an adverse effect at one point. When the lady in the game was giving instructions, we all pointed the gun and shot to kind of see if anything would happen, which led to some discussion in the headsets, which in turn covered up the audio of what the lady was actually saying. As a result, some of game’s narrative was lost.