And no, I’m not referring to the actual black void of space, although it’s not completely removed from that concept. I’m more referring to the scale of objects and the player and the empty area between those objects.
Space and Accessibility
I’ve been working on a project for a couple of months now that focuses on creating potions. They’re will be videos later showing where it’s currently at, but one of the main challenges we’ve been facing is an understanding the space in which you inhabit. In our initial illustrations and design, we had a space that matched an optimized layout for Vive or Oculus devices (6’x6′).
Not only was that unrealistic because not everyone has 36 square feet to move around, but when we played around with it, it really served no purpose. We wanted to keep things quick and frantic, and we originally thought it would be best if players had to move around the space to achieve that. When we finally got around to testing it, it sucked.
People don’t run in VR, so expecting people to make these quick movements with a headset with wires and such is heavy and cumbersome, plus you have to be cautious because you don’t want to rip the wires out or tangle yourself up. If we expanded development to the Quest, then maybe we’d be able to keep the larger space as the freedom from wiring may help the body move freely as the arms do. It’s a simple thing, but the tethered feeling in the Vive or Oculus headset never leaves you, no matter how immersive the world is. So we pivoted, and decided to move everything way closer together, like most contemporary VR games.
This was immediately better. Limiting the frantic movement to the arms themselves helped make things feel way more frantic. You don’t have to worry about a limited range of motion or tethered feeling, and that freedom is immediately felt in the increase in speed that even we developers were able to complete and deliver potions.
It was unfortunate to find that full space, quick paced movement is kinda unobtainable with most of the current contemporary gaming VR devices. In the future though I plan on spending some time developing solely for Quest, as it’s untethered headset should allow for this sort of movement, and I think quickly and actively running around a space, while a little reckless, could be a whole lot of fun. And the active element could help any experience feel a lot more compelling, even if the actions/goals are fairly mundane.
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