The first VR experience I visited at the event was NYC Bungee, with what the idea of what this experience is about being given away by the title.
The team at Blackwall had brought with them a demo that included Beginner and Extreme jumps, wanting to offer something for VR newcomers and people with VR experience alike. With the years of experience I’ve had in this medium I went straight in for the extreme. This had you jumping from the Statue of Liberty, and as with Richie’s Plank Experience the sense of height was there as soon as you walked out onto the platform to select your difficulty.
What is always going to be important in something like this is that you are immersed in the setting. The team have made a number of choices to make sure that you were. This included a full room scale set-up which had you physically walking to the elevator and back out onto the platforms edge. The visuals were strong and made sure this side of the experience did not remove you from the immersion this created.
With what the team had brought with them, as you would expect this was a relatively short experience, that had no end except a member of the team removing you from the VR equipment. I thought this was a brave choice by the team taking this type of experience to the event, because even as someone with years of VR under my belt I can still feel uneasy on long falls in games.
One big kudos to Blackwall is that they recorded people’s jumps and reactions and took the details to send yours to. Also it was great watching people’s reactions new and veterans alike, with some great moments had watching people step out onto that platform – only to realise that VR really gave you that sense of scale. This resulted in some great reactions and some users questioning their decision to brave the NYC Bungee VR experience.
