Virtual reality and third-person games

How many of you have played day and night in Lara Croft aka Tomb Raider? And in Splinter Cell, Assassin's Creed? And finally, the question of the week: is there GTA fans here? We knowingly listed these particular games. What unites them, besides violence and going wild popularity? That's right, the third person view. Spending a day in these games, few of us thought about a certain unnatural position with which the player observes and controls the process.

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

And only a person has thought of such a strange occupation, how to manage something or someone, looking at him from the side, substituting another body for blows and falls, but “taking” all emotions and impressions. After playing games with a third person, we associate ourselves with the character as well as in games on behalf of the first. Looking at "myself" from behind. That is another perversion, if you think about it.
')


And we decided to try, but what it really is. In a sense, contact with the physical world, but while receiving visual information exclusively from its third person. How to implement it? The brainchild of “Father Duma and Quake” by John Carmack came to the rescue - virtual reality glasses Oculus Rift. Probably, there is not a single inveterate gamer, who would have with affection and impatience not expected to launch the sale of full-fledged virtual reality glasses. Youtube breaks from video clips in which players are immersed in virtual reality with the help of this technology. There is an opinion that with the launch of sales of Oculus Rift, Carmack can be finally counted among the pantheon of saints: modern youth perceives Doom and Quake as a cross between useless fossil and dust of time, and these glasses promise to radically change the sensations from virtual game worlds.

Mail.Ru Group has many talented and versatile people in the ranks of its employees, and one of them is Alexander (@DreamForger), who is fond of game development using virtual reality technology. In the past, our post, he shared his experience of assembling glasses of virtual reality from various materials. It so happened that Alexander is the happy owner of the Oculus Rift copy for developers, and he gladly accepted our offer to participate in the third-person experiment. What we have done is best to watch and listen to in our video, which is posted at the beginning of the post.

We were interested to observe the process of the experiment. The main participants, Alexander and Catherine, noticeably worried. Yes, the assembled design is not distinguished by its special elegance, but for the experiment we were more important in speed and ease of assembly (this is not an exhibition sample):











Echidny colleagues, having seen this construction, sent us this picture:



After setting up the equipment, it was time for Ekaterina to instruct:





It didn’t work right away without problems, I had to stop the experiment a few more times, and Alexander went deep into the settings again.



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





The result of our efforts you already know from the video. We consider the experiment a success, and we really liked the process. Now discuss ideas for new challenges. If you have any thoughts about what the next experiment might be, welcome to the comments! :)