Virtual reality and third-person games

How many of you have played all day long in Lara Croft aka Tomb Raider? And in Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed? And finally, the question of the week: are there any fans of GTA? We have not in vain listed exactly these games. What unites them, in addition to violence and overwhelming popularity? That's right, a third-person view. Spending a day in these games, few of us thought about some unnaturalness of the position from which the player observes and controls the process.

After all, we live, looking at the world exclusively from the inside of our skull. Actually, like all other living creatures with eyes (except, perhaps, those whose eyes are placed on moving stems).

And only a man came up with such a strange occupation, how to manage something or someone, looking at him from the side, substituting someone else’s body for blows and falls, but “taking” himself all the emotions and impressions. After all, playing games with a third-person view, we associate ourselves with the character in the same way as in games on behalf of the first person. Looking at “yourself” from behind. That is a perversion, if you think about it.



And we decided to try, and what it really is. In the sense, to contact the physical world, but at the same time receiving visual information exclusively from his third party. How to implement this? The brainchild of “Father Duma and Kwaki” by John Carmack came to the rescue - virtual reality glasses Oculus Rift. Probably, there is already not a single avid gamer who would not expect with tenderness and impatience the launch of the sale of full-fledged virtual reality glasses. YouTube breaks from videos, which clearly illustrates the immersion of players in virtual reality using this technology. It is believed that with the launch of Oculus Rift Carmack's sales, it will be possible to finally be considered a pantheon of saints: modern youth perceives Doom and Quake as a cross between useless fossils and dust of the times, and these glasses promise to radically change the feelings of virtual game worlds.

There are many talented and versatile people in the ranks of Mail.Ru Group employees, and one of them is Alexander (@DreamForger), who is fond of developing games using virtual reality technology. In our last postHe shared his experience of assembling virtual reality glasses from various materials. It so happened that Alexander is the happy owner of the Oculus Rift instance for developers, and he gladly accepted our offer to participate in the "Third-Person" experiment. About what we have done, it is best to watch and listen in our video, which is posted at the beginning of the post.

We were interested in observing the process of the experiment. The main participants, Alexander and Catherine, were noticeably worried. Yes, the assembled design does not differ in particular elegance, but for the experiment, speed and ease of assembly were more important to us (this is not an exhibition sample):











Echidna colleagues, having seen this design, sent us this picture:



After setting up the equipment, it was time for Catherine to be instructed:





Not immediately everything worked without problems, several more times I had to stop the experiment, and Alexander again delved into the settings.



At this time, Mail.Ru Group employees and guests watched with interest the experiment from the balcony:





The result of our efforts is already known to you from the video. We consider the experiment a success, and we really liked the process itself. Now discussing ideas for new trials. If you have any thoughts on what the next experiment might be - welcome to comment! :)