
How we launched full-immersion VR arenas and developed our VR games - thedeepvr
https://medium.com/@zapletnev/the-deep-full-immersion-virtual-reality-arenas-a8c7119596cc
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soylentcola
I admit I love reading about these sorts of things because I (naively) thought
I'd "invented" the next awesome thing as a teen in the 90's when I thought of
a similar concept.

It was during the mainstream of DOOM and the peak popularity of "Laser Tag"
when the home/toy version of the game had given way to warehouses with
backpack-powered systems and centralized scoring/tracking.

I figured you could build a laptop/small form factor PC that would fit in a
backpack and power a VR rig to overlay a virtual environment on the
"warehouse". Since the play space was a known environment and could have
tracking beacons, orientation would be relatively simple and the computers
could communicate with a central server. Since laser tag was already like a
first-person shooter, it wouldn't require much more than graphics to visualize
the "laser beams" and maybe add some texture to walls and surfaces. No need to
simulate movement or the tactile feel of platforms and such because they exist
in real life.

Of course I had no concept of the processing power needed to do this or how it
compared to a laptop/sff PC of the time. I also had no idea of just how tough
it would be to achieve usable latency on such a system. But hey...it was 1994
and I was 16. I thought we'd all be playing VR DOOM laser tag within a few
years as soon as someone got around to building it.

I guess my timeframe was off by 25 years or so, but maybe in another 5 it'll
be commonplace.

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Ajedi32
I've seen installations like this in a lot of high-traffic areas like malls
and amusement parks. Interestingly, they all seem to use rather bulky setups
involving laptops in backpacks attached to wired PC VR headsets. Two years ago
though, Oculus demonstrated a similar system that requires nothing but a large
empty space and a $400 standalone Oculus Quest for each player[1] (no backpack
PCs or external tracking hardware required). This seems like a much cheaper
solution, so I'm a little curious as to why arcades haven't started adopting
it yet. Is it just because there's no official support for this feature from
Oculus yet?

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJXpHp_iQF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJXpHp_iQF4)

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seanmcdirmid
Oculus Quest hasn’t even been on the market for a year yet, so give it some
time. Also, the Quest is a bit more closed than other platforms, it isn’t
clear how they will handle custom VR experiences yet.

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Cpoll
Closed shouldn't be a problem, every Quest can be developed on and sideloaded
to.

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tjchear
This might sound crazy, but is there such a thing as programmable terrain? I
can see this being technically feasible and adding realism to a VR game, but
it might be cost prohibitive or a liability when people fall.

It'd be cool tho if it can be done!

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saberdancer
You can't see your legs in VR (at least VR of today). This makes it quite
dangerous to have uneven terrain. Even something as small as a carpet can
throw you off. Especially as you tend to move in circles and backpedal a lot
more than in real life. I guess it could work in a big roomscale space with
perfect 1:1 matching (and visible feet).

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thomaswatling
I found this really interesting from the ecosystem point of view. You've got
the hardware manufacturers (Oculus / HTC), the studios creating VR content,
content creation tools (Unity), accessory manufacturers, distribution of
content (Steam) but then The Deep team came in and created another set of
knowledge/hardware/software for multiplayer venues, a distribution mechanism
for multiplayer games, and a franchise model for venues - and they needed to
create the first few games to prove the model / jump-start the market.

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awinter-py
hardware matters here -- apple is probably going to launch some kind of
wearable headset which will make these things a million times easier to
bootstrap

also think of their screen streaming & radio expertise, they'll have a shot at
dealing w/ the interference issues

hard to know if VR hardware is waiting for a software killer app, or if the
equipment is not there yet

cheaper positioning will also matter -- need to locate the equipment, locate
obstacles / other players, and provide VR layers on real-world objects. Varjo
is starting to do this with built-in hand-tracking but too soon to say what
tech can reliably scale to various physical objects / content.

