An experience for four simultaneous players in which they interact in room scale on the same physical space thanks to Vive and MSI PC backpacks.
The Japanese division of Sony Music it is at the SXSW festival that is being held these days in Austin, United States, showing Gold Rush VR, an experience for 4 players in room scale on the same physical space in which they travel with a wagon to three different scenarios, as reported by UploadVR. All this is possible thanks to HTC Vive positioning technology and MSI backpack PCs that prevent users from getting tangled with cables.
The experience also plays with real elements that are in turn in the virtual world, something that allows us to really touch them, thus elevating the immersion. In Sony Music they intend to create attractions that use virtual reality to raise the value of their IPs and hence this proof that they are showing. One of the most complicated challenges to create this experience was to make sure that the positioning was accurate enough, since the players have to get on a real wagon and everything has to work correctly so as not to experience any type of failure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12S_C5AIxxc
The limitations of PlayStation VR in terms of tracking are more than known, so Sony does not use its virtual reality device in this project. Sony has at the festival more virtual reality areas that do not use PSVR as is the case of Parallel Eyes, another social experience for 4 players, in which all users see what the other players are seeing, thus having 4 different perspectives with which to try to take advantage in a minigame. You can watch a video with more information about Parallel Eyes here. Both experiences, Gold Rush VR and Parallel Eyes, are part of Sony’s WOW Factory, a set of projects from the company’s innovation laboratory that intend to experiment with technology.
