VR or Virtual reality is a technology created decades agó; even in the 90s we would occasionally find a VR game in the arcades that typically consisted of a platform to stand on and a huge headset. For the first time this technology is now coming into our homes thanks to a viable piece of gaming tech at a relatively affordable price, no more expensive than other peripherals that players often buy. This technology is being pioneered by the guys at Oculus with its Oculus Rift, a stylish, lightweight device which mixes glasses, microphone and headphones that it opens the door to a new generation of games.
For those who never got the chance to play a virtual reality game, basically what happens is that the player equips a headset that has a built-in visual display and headphones, which acts like a personal Cinema, and the headset has a motion tracking technology that as you move your head the camera viewpoint in the game moves with you. Bringing this technology to our homes is something very new and groundbreaking, and with the current rise of the video games, there are plenty of creative ways to apply it, so some companies are already seeing the possibilities of virtual reality games and are acting accordingly.
There’s been a relatively sudden shift since it became apparent that this technology wasn’t going to disappear overnight, so some developers are working in a new generation of VR games created specifically for Occulus Rift, while others have taken another different way and intend to modify their games to enable Oculus support. Any game can be compatible with Oculus Rift, but first-person games are the ones that will benefit the most and fortunately for us there are a number of free to play games that fall into this bracket, and here are some of the ones we can’t wait to see:
From the creators of EVE Online comes EVE Valkyrie, the only game from our list created specifically to use Oculus Rift, and in fact the game is known as EVE: VR. While other games mould the Oculus Rift capabilities around their own mechanics and systems EVE Valkyrie’s mechanics and systems are moulded around the Oculus Rift. As a Cockpit game, EVE Valkyrie has such things as visual missile tracking where players must keep a visual lock on their targets, which can be done even if their ship is pointing in a different direction. Essentially what this means is that EVE Valkyrie is going to be able to do things with the Oculus Rift that many other games simply can’t as their core mechanics will support players that don’t use an Oculus Rift. A bold move by developers CCP, but as one of the most innovative gaming companies around it’s hardly a surprise to us.
Star Citizien, fits perfectly to the Oculus Rift because players can move from their hangars to their ships without the need of loading screens, meaning players can take full advantage of the realistic first person view as they step into their ship, take a seat in their swivel cockpit chair and glance over the cockpit controls. When out in space having the full 360 view both in your ship and the space outside your cockpit is spectacular.
Here we have an example of how to implement the Oculus Rift once the game is released. The game is a FPS where players get into the cockpit of a giant mech and fight on over dystopian battlefields. The pros of a game like Hawken adopting the support means that players can look around the cockpit with a full field of view and really feel like they are driving their mech, the realism of being actually in the battle is only further enhanced and really adds to the gameplay. However, with a few bugs and glitches here and there, it is often quite obvious when a game has not been designed with the Oculus Rift solely in mind and instead the already designed systems, mechanics and features have had to be modified afterwards. Still, even with its issues there is no denying that the Oculus Rift simply makes the game even better.
War Thunder is another game in which you get inside a cabin and play in first person, but here players take the skies in their own World War II aeroplanes. While many flight simulators allow head tracking technology support to move the camera, the intuitiveness of the Oculus Rift takes you to a higher level. A problem of this type of games is that the scale of the cabin, in depth and length, sometimes seems too small or too large, especially with those games developed to support the Oculus Rift and not necessarily initially designed with it in mind. No one can argue though that being able to take a glance over to your wing as smoke plumes out of it from an enemy attack is going to be awesome.
The last of our cockpit games is Victory: The Age of Racing a Formula 1 simulator, which has already announced its compatibility with Oculus Rift, aso given the static nature of an F1 car is cockpit, the lack of 360 movement that can be seen in flight simulators, we expect the addition to be more of a gimmick. That said as we have continued to establish in this article feeling like you are sat in your cars cockpit is going to make it all the more awesome as you give a glance over your shoulder whilst overtaking a competitor.
Sony has made it clear that it intends to incorporate the Occulus Rift support in EverQuest Next, but just how this will play out given the restrictions of a MMORPG is still to be seen. Occulus Rift allows you to see your environment as if it were the real world, o the use of menus and static user interfaces as seen in MMO’s will be one hurdle Sony needs to deal with. The majority of players play their MMORPGs in third person mode, so it will be interesting to see that we are going to expect with the Occulus Rift in a third-person game.
A new MMO that is being that is taking advantage of not just the Oculus Rift but also motion tracking technology so that players can look around the world that they enter with the rift, but also manipulate objects with their hands that are tracked as you move them in real life and displayed accordingly in the game. The game takes Virtual Reality up a step, and whilst the game is still in development and right now visually quite a way off from the other MMO’s available, this is definitely the title to keep your eye on.
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