I’m not likely to forget my first time using Oculus Rift. The Oculus VR company’s virtual reality headset is worth every bit of hype I had absorbed in the last several months, but written impressions and video demonstrations alike didn’t prepare me for the wonderment I felt in the cockpit of a fighter ship in CCP Games’ tech-demo-turned-game EVE: Valkyrie. I knew to close my eyes and picture the surroundings I’d be entering to prepare for the dissonant impact of instantly moving from a convention center ballroom to a science-fiction cockpit. I even knew the controls to CCP’s space combat simulator, set in the EVE Online universe and (currently) played on PC with an Xbox 360 controller and Rift headset.
What I didn’t know is that Oculus would consume me and my sense of being. I physically looked down to see the arms, torso, and legs of a Valkyrie pilot. When I moved my neck to the left to look beneath my cockpit seat, my avatar did the same–and suddenly, he was me. This revelatory moment of transmission–or, suspension of disbelief–was my abandonment of the idea that I was in a chair, in a Las Vegas convention center, surrounded by dozens of others. As the deployment shaft, extended for hundreds of feet in front of me, was illuminated by warning lights, I felt their presence and could turn around to see the ones over my shoulder. A female computer voice announced my imminent launch. My vision shook as I rocketed forward: louder, faster, until suddenly, space, in all its vast emptiness and starlit possibility, stretched endlessly before me.
I had little time to enjoy the brilliant sight and contemplate how this intense lvel of immersion had instantly transported me to another reality. EVE: Valkyrie is, after all, a space shooter, and I had three allotted minutes to work with two spacemates and score points against the opposing three pilots. Acclimating to the Valkyrie’s controls took longer than I’m eager to admit; guiding missile lock-on with my head while controlling the ship’s pitch, rolls, turns, and corners with a controller was a novel experience. But it wasn’t only first-time complexity that saddled me with a negative score (sorry, Amarr teammates). Rather, I was so quickly sold on the promise of Oculus Rift and the unprecedented experience it offers that my mind was whisked away by possibilities of an Oculus experience on PlayStation 4.
Oculus’ most obvious applications to console gaming are to racing games. Imagine: your first experience with Driveclub, or Gran Turismo 7, or a next-generation WipEout, is in the driver’s seat of a vehicle. As the track flies by in a blur, you turn to glance at the passing details. As you press down on a pedal accessory, your in-game legs and feet do the same. You’re using rear-view mirrors and checking gauges, moving your head as you would in a real super car. The engine’s roar and radio music envelope you. You turn to see the furious face of your opponent as you eke past. The confetti that explodes as you cross the finish line blankets your windows and windshield. The crowd pulls you out of your car and you look around to see their beaming faces–or focus intently on the trophy podium ahead.
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For a traditional first-person shooter or adventure, control differences demand more thoughtful execution. I dream of playing The Elder Scrolls Online with Oculus Rift. The left and right analog sticks would still handle movement and aiming, respectively, but moving your head with Oculus would allow fine adjustments or a total alternative to looking around as your character. In other, less conventional genres, the applications could benefit production and storytelling techniques. Give me Beyond: Two Souls and an empty room to move about, and I’ll become the cameraman. Give me Kingdom Hearts III, and I’ll look at the Heartless I want Donald and Goofy to focus their attacks on. Give me Half-Life 3 (lol) and I’ll nod to indicate my agreement to Alyx–or shake my head when I don’t want her to go.
This isn’t a far-fetched pipe dream. Next-generation console support is confirmed for Oculus Rift, and big-name publishers have been putting their weight and faith behind it for months. Even Sony’s excited at the interactive possibilities, with Shuhei Yoshida admitting at E3 2013 that Sony has "a couple of the development kits" and refusing, with a big smile, to give comment on whether PS4 compatibility and games supporting Oculus Rift could come down the line.
With any luck, CCP’s EVE: Valkyrie will be one of the those games, and perhaps the first to truly sell consumers and industry alike on the entertainment power of virtual reality that is virtual reality. From a technical standpoint, Valkyrie is damn near there: on prototype Oculus HD hardware, visual detail popped with vibrant clarity and perfectly function 3v3 matches ran without hiccups all weekend. But CCP Games is a historically ambitious company, and few (if any) developers can claim to possess the same unyielding vision that produces the first-ever free-to-play MMOFPS on a console, or a virtual-reality extension to the lore of a decade-old MMO behemoth that continues to grow its subscriber base every year. It’s going to take time and sales evidence of Oculus Rift’s market viability to yield innovative software from all corners of PlayStation’s development ecosystem, and neither Oculus Rift nor its HD counterpart are anywhere near what a reasonable person would call "mass-market friendly." But they don’t necessarily need to be (yet), and the development time between Oculus’ current state and its mass-market release months or years from now should allow experiences like EVE Valkyrie to populate and definite the kit.
If the entire PlayStation nation could have the same hands-on (eyes-on?) time with EVE: Valkyrie that I had at EVE Vegas, we’d be clamoring for more–for our favorite characters and worlds to envelope our senses, for the worlds we love saving to be made real and inviting. But I’m not worried, and I have every confidence that this future is coming. If pioneers like the engineers at CCP continue to push the tech and innovate in uncharted space, and if Sony can seal the deal on hardware compatibility, the first-party stable and PlayStation development family will follow suit.