Video Games
Virtual Reality Is Here. Can We Play With It?
Oculus Rift and Morpheus Take Games to a New Dimension
MARCH 23, 2014
Critic's Notebook
By CHRIS SUELLENTROP
SAN FRANCISCO - The notion of virtual reality has been tantalizing since at least the 1980s, when William Gibson's novel "Neuromancer" and the holodeck on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" popularized the idea of transporting people into a three-dimensional computerized environment. And until recently, it's been science fiction.
But after trying an array of prototypes and development kits at the Game Developers Conference here last week, I can assure you that virtual reality works. Technology is no longer the limitation. The lingering question is what game designers, artists and filmmakers should do with it.
Consumer versions aren't available yet and may not arrive this year. But for $350, game designers can order the newest version of the Oculus Rift, a device being developed for personal computers and backed by some of the most famous names in video games. The development kit is to begin shipping in July.
"It's not just a peripheral device for game developers," said Danfung Dennis, a photojournalist who directed the Oscar-nominated feature "Hell and Back Again," about the war in Afghanistan, and who was at the conference to show a new documentary made to be viewed with the Rift. "This is a new medium for storytelling."
Yet figuring out the right visual language for games, movies and other fictional works in virtual reality is "probably going to be harder than the technology itself," Mr. Dennis said. Cuts, for example, are extremely disorienting.
The Rift is basically a TV screen that sits in front of your eyes while you're wearing a set of blacked-out ski goggles. Instead of manipulating the camera in the world with a hand-held controller, as you would with a normal video game, you perceive your "surroundings" by turning and craning your neck and head, just as you would in real life. Wearing a Rift makes you look ridiculous to others, but it also creates the sensation that you have teleported into an alternate universe.
Oculus VR sold 60,000 copies of its first development kit, which began shipping during last year's Game Developers Conference, where people waited for hours in line to try it. This year, after introducing a vastly improved prototype, Oculus began facing public competition for the first time, most notably in the form of Sony's Project Morpheus for the PlayStation 4.
Sony's headset isn't in stores, though the company is making it available to outside developers. At the conference, I used Morpheus to descend into the ocean in a shark cage; to participate in a spaceship dogfight; to battle a medieval dummy with swords; to explore a stone-cobbled courtyard; and to stand on the surface of Mars, as manifested by data from NASA's Curiosity rover. When I leaned forward in the virtual shark cage to look into the ocean depths, I naturally and unconsciously reached out to grab the railing in front of me - and clawed at the air instead.
Most game designers are practically ecstatic about the possibilities. "I want to make a V.R. game," said Patrick Plourde, a creative director at Ubisoft's giant Montreal studio, where 2,000 developers work. He said it would be "very exciting" to make the first must-have game for virtual reality.
But Lionel Raynaud, the vice president for creative at Ubisoft Montreal, cautioned that the studio was not planning to make such a game yet. The technology would need to sell a million units before it was a viable business for large game developers, he suggested. "One or two failures is enough to close your business," Mr. Raynaud said. "There has to be a market."
Enthusiasts aren't worried about sales. "I think there is a potential user base of billions," said Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games, which created two demos for the Oculus Rift that could be played at the conference. Mr. Sweeney emphasized that the current virtual-reality technology was to the device of his imagination what early mobile devices - think of Palm Pilots and Treos - are to the iPhone 5s. "We're at Version 1 of a technology that's going to completely change the world by Version 5," he said.
Microsoft, which has yet to unveil its own version of the technology for the Xbox or for Windows computers, seems persuaded that virtual reality will be here soon. "To me, there's a question of whether it takes over the space or whether it's a solution for certain scenarios," said Phil Spencer, the corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios.
And that's the real mystery: What games and other experiences will be most appealing in virtual reality?
One of the first discoveries that people make is that fast-paced games can make you physically ill. Oculus publishes a 42-page guide for developers with recommendations for avoiding eyestrain and preventing disorientation and nausea. Over the past year, the Rift team has gone from demonstrating first-person shooter games that involve running and jumping in a virtual world to showing off games that involve sitting down - on a couch or in a cockpit - while you look at the world around you.
One of the closest analogues might be motion controls for video games, which felt magical when first experienced with Nintendo's Wii or Microsoft's Kinect. But years later, most motion-controlled games are shallow experiences that mimic real-world activities like dancing or bowling and are best played only in short bursts. Virtual reality is similarly transporting in short demonstrations. But no one at the Game Developers Conference was ready to show a game for the Rift or Morpheus that would be worth playing for an hour or more.
Still, I left the conference a believer in virtual reality - or unreality. Some of the most intriguing games that I played last week were abstract or even cartoonish. Darknet, a game by an independent designer from San Diego, casts the player as a cyberpunk hacker who is surrounded by colorful globes and nodes. Please Don't, Spacedog!, a game from a Montreal collective called Ko-Op Mode, is a goofy journey on a dog-piloted space truck that intentionally exploits the sense of bodily displacement that the Rift creates.
And IDNA, from a Swiss studio called Apelab, is an interactive animated film in which the player controls the camera by looking around with a Rift rather than embodying an avatar or virtual character. "We want to put people inside our movie," said Emilie Tappolet, the artistic director at Apelab. "You're a viewer, not an actor."
Even more realistic games experimented with play styles that would be less appealing on a more conventional screen. In World of Diving, I took pictures of clown fish and sea turtles, and explored the sunken remains of a shipwreck. It was captivating, but the Netherlands studio behind the project might want to reconsider its name: Vertigo Games.
