Michael Lenzi is the CEO & co-founder of Atomic VR, and they’ve spent the last couple of years experimenting with untethered VR experiences. They’ve created a backpack with custom hardware that can run a desktop GPU for up to an hour, and they’ve also created a Star Wars-inspired Lightsword Experience that can be played in a space up to 20 feet by 20 feet with a Vive. They’re currently not interested in mass producing their hardware solution, but are interested in enabling and developing eSports VR experiences that give you a more active workout.
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Michael says that the VR hardware manufacturers have been knocking it out of the park with providing high framerate and low persistence HMDs, but that being tethered is something that decreases the immersion. They’ve been prototyping and developing their own custom hardware in order to create an untethered & mobile Vive system. The Vive’s Lighthouse tracking solution is particularly well-suited for an untethered tracking solution because each unit does not need to be directly connected to a computer.
Atomic VR has been creating automotive visualizations that are full-scale and have natural interactions, and they’re also interested in other B2B applications as well as getting into eSports applications. They’re interested in creating experiences where you could have a workout while playing with your friends. In the process of developing and playing their 20×20 Lightsword Experience, Ben Teitler lost 30 pounds from all of the movement and activity that he got from playing their game:
They’ve also developed a Fruit Ninja inspired experience for the Vive called Ninja Trainer where you have to actively swing your hands as if you were slicing fruit. They originally accurately modeled a sword but found that this was too difficult and had to make it a bit easier to play. Michael says that this is an experience that he expects to have a lot of reply value because people can improve the more that they play it, but it also provides quite an invigorating workout.
He says that the Wii and Kinect started the trend towards more active gaming experiences, but that they were too easy to hack. Once people realized that you could just flick your wrist instead of fully swinging your arm, then a lot of the exercise was lost because it was less efficient in playing the game. With VR’s submillimeter accuracy, then he expects that VR eSports will more accurately mimic 1:1 movement and natural interactions.
Michael says that they have some more ideas for some peripherals that would make eSports VR experiences within a room-scale environment more safe, and that this will be also something that the VR HMD manufacturers will also be in the process of continually improving with passthrough cameras as well as mapping out your physical environment.
Finally, Michael says that he was inspired by Vivid Vision’s gamification of physical therapy, and that he expects that the combination of eSports and social gaming with introduce a lot of new ways to have fun with your friends. Overall, he sees that VR will enable a lot of new stories to be told where you feel like you’re actually there, and VR has the possibility to show us how we’re all interconnected and allow us to empathize with experiences that we were previously blind to.
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