This past weekend I’ve had a real opportunity to play around with Virtual Reality (VR) and my Oculus Rift. If you’ve never experienced VR then I would highly recommend you take the first opportunity possible…..it’s simply incredible.
Earlier in the week I downloaded the social app V-time for the Oculus. This app allows you to meet with other people and then “teleport” to a wide variety of destinations. So you could be chatting with friends in Paris (including hearing the traffic in the distance and someone playing La Vie En Rose) or look down on the Earth from the International Space station.
There are other aspects of the app that allow you to share photos in a boardroom at the top of a skyscraper. I think it’s only a matter of time before you can share a power point presentation and have a white board materialise for anyone to interact with.
I downloaded Chronos the other night which is a VR game where you are wielding a sword to fight off bad guys. All really cool but the best application by far would have to be the star fighter combat game, Eve Valkyrie. When you hit your thrusters and whip around the far side of an asteroid to escape a locked-on missile it’s nothing short of spectacular. The sense of actually being in a cockpit and launched out the side of a space-carrier is amazing.
When you really think about it, VR is in its infancy and everything will just get better and better. I hate to think what it will be like in a couple of years time…..and hence my decision to dive into the programming side of the Oculus.
Games and apps from other people’s imagination are great but building a world yourself is nothing short of mind blowing. So far I only have really simple objects built out of spheres and cubes but not long from now I plan on building far more complex buildings that people can explore. Why am I doing this? Because it’s the future and any online business depends on entrepreneurs being able to quickly grasp the changing opportunities that VR like technologies will provide.
If any of you have an Oculus Rift or another VR headset then let me know.....maybe we can meet online. Anyway…..I’d better get going as I have a bogey on my tail!