I have a love for Virtual Reality, and what people do with this new medium, so I was excited to get an interview relating to a VR experience at EGX. I met with Jindřich from the Theatre VR team, and we discussed this game/experience he was working on for the HITC Vive.
Theatre VR looks to bring a number of Theatre shows to VR, and gives the option to play out different roles in these plays/performances. For EGX they had brought along a scene Hamlet by the great play-write Shakespeare, which was a six minutes experience. Firstly when I go there I watched Jindřich act out the scene as Hamlet himself, and the amount of work that went into that role. With this in mind when it came to me to have a try before the interview took place, I took on the role of King Claudius – which was listed as medium difficulty.
As we discuss in the interview (found below), you can see why this game has been developed for the HTC Vive as it really makes use of the room scale HTC’s platform offers. The way it makes use of this is, for my role as King Claudius I had to sit down and stand up – this is registered by being in the position of the silhouette you see. For me it got as about as difficult as standing up, sitting back down (thanks Jindřich for making sure I was in the place the chair was), reaching out and placing my hands in set places. However, Jindřich’s role as Hamlet had him lying on the floor with his arm stretched out. This idea really does put you in place of the scene, and immerses you the fact you are meant to be on the stage yourself.
For your lines, you are required to press the trigger on the back of the control in time with it matching on the screen. After the interview we discussed this a bit more and they are looking to bring in speech to text software, so you can speak the lines yourself. If this is possible to implement this could bring a next level of immersion to the being in this play.
From my six minutes with Theatre VR I can definitely say this is something that is 100% unique to what I have played. With the plans to introduce possible multiplayer as well it could be a very strong entry to the platform, especially if you have a dramatic background.
Lastly I would like mention, that at the end I stepped forward and took a bow with the other characters. I did not know if this was required as part of the experience – but after putting in the performance I felt obliged to. I would strongly recommend keeping an eye out for this in the future, as it has the possibility to a great addition to VR.
