Game Studio Develops Nausea-free VR Experience in HTC Vive, Announces Debut Game Title
Thanks to the Oculus Rift, VR has got another chance to become the next big thing in consumer technology. More and more companies, especially in the gaming industry, are tapping into the huge potential of VR as the future of gaming. The previously weird, almost-impossible kind of tech is now rapidly becoming the norm of how we will consume content in the near future. Games such as First-Person Shooters (FPS) are some of the games that developers are currently working on developing for VR. One game developer, Cloudhead Games, is working on its first-ever title for virtual reality. Cloudhead Games’ launch title, “The Gallery: Call of the Starseed”, has been developed from the ground up to work with the HTC Vive, a VR headset that’s both developed by HTC and Valve. Currently made up of former employees of Bioware and Relic, Cloudhead Games has also developed the Blink VR locomotion mechanic, a VR motion technology promising to deliver “100-percent nausea-free play experience.”
Cloudhead Games’ Blink VR locomotion mechanic is a new motion initiative in VR that aims to provide VR gamers with non-intrusive positioning cues and gives the gamer the freedom to play in varying physical environments even while being upright or standing up. Conventional VR headsets only allow its user to be in a stationary position while experiencing VR. Blink VR gives the player great freedom in moving within the virtual world in response to his actual physical movements, thus eliminating the sensation of motion sickness or nausea whenever moving. Cloudhead Games’ system also projects the user’s virtual volume so it creates new boundaries that the player can either move around or stay in.
Blink VR has its name conceptualized from the “blinking” technique that helps in reducing perceived motion sickness in VR. Our ear is a natural motion equalizer, thus the nausea that people feel in virtual reality is often caused by any motion seen by the user that is not reflected or perceived by the human ear. Through the “blinking” phenomena created in short distances, nausea can be eliminated within the user’s VR experience.
The Blink VR technology is divided into three distinct yet coherent systems: Cinematic Blink, Precision Blink and Volume Blink. The Cinematic Blink is an instantaneous blink forward towards the direction that the gamer is facing; Precision Blink adds a visual projection that would depend on the user’s point of view (POV); and Volume Blink combines the former two types by adding the ability to place and move your volume further into the 3D space.
The HTC Vive VR headset will be launched alongside “The Gallery: Call of the Starseed”, which is expected to be available later this year.
For more information on Cloudhead Games’ Blink VR technology, please visit the following websites:
https://cloudhead.squarespace.com
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/htc-vive-vr-cloudhead-games,29809.html
http://www.ibtimes.com.au/new-vr-technology-could-remove-nausea-1460538
