As mentioned in previous articles, VR will not be mature before two or three years. Meanwhile tech companies are investing into VR to prepare the future because of the Facebook’s Oculus Rift VR evangelizing successes. Three years after its successful Kickstarter campaign, the core community brings more and more developers involved into VR. Oculus team is focusing on good feelings when people are experiencing VR for the first time. While the VR word of mouth is spreading, more and more non-tech people want to live the VR experience.

Like the Oculus team, we — my VR buddies and I — are convinced that the first VR experience is fundamental for the development of VR and the acceptance of the technology by a wide audience. Experiencing VR is likely more than a two-minutes-tailored-experience during an exhibition. In real world, your desk is busy, cables tangle themselves, demo are crashing… Here are some tips and demos we have collected after these home sessions.

Setup, brief, run an Oculus demo

Don’t do a session from scratch. If you need to plug hardware, do it before. Check cables, clean googles and find your measure tape for IPD computation. Reboot for a clean OS startup.

Pitch VR experience! Don’t forget people are far from your knowledge and it’s important to warn and help them ton how to get the best possible experience. Minimize the time between wearing the headset and the demo startup. Care about your subjects feelings while they are wearing the headset.

In my personal workflow, I’m pitching while I’m creating the subject profile in Oculus tool. Advising about allowed movements during the demo, looking at something with head rotation rather than eyes, try to not move the chair. Rather than trying to explain positional tracking, I prefer to tell the subject to close his eyes, look straightforward and have confidence in his inner ear. It enables a smooth transition and a nice wow effect when opening eyes into the demo. A good first leap into VR and a warm welcome.

Survey your subject ! Owning an Oculus is nice, looking at people experiencing is fantastic. I saw people jumping from the chair trying to grab something in VR or people experiencing motion sickness or worse a crashing demo.

During demos, I try to remain silent to let people dive into VR with their questions about it. That’s why headphones are mandatory when experiencing VR. Also I mainly ban drunk people and those tempted by a first experience with an horror game.

Prepare a smooth landing. When people are back to reality they need to be a bit assisted. Release headphones and headset carefully, check cables to avoid bad luck movement, and ask for anything of motion sickness.

I try to have some water ready to drink. I’ve noticed people are breathing differently while experiencing VR and get them thirsty. If a subject wants to experience another demo, i’m carrying with a timeout before the next demo. It’s also important to identify how people have reacted to their first step into VR. That’s why it’s crucial to select carefully the first experience.

Which first demo should I select?

Keep it simple. VR is stunning enough to select a seated demo without controls. I had my first experience with SightLine: The Chair. The last version of the build is supporting Leap Motion and 3D sound. I’ve used this demo many times as first experience. It’s a nice deep dive into VR possibilities, but it’s sometimes too intense for newcomers. With his nick movement based gameplay, it’s sometimes a bit hard for subject to find how to trigger the next level. A nice second experience in my opinion.

Senza Peso is a good candidate. It’s short, seated with a nice universe. It’s my favorite first demo because you can easily analyze how people react to 360° immersion and presence feelings. The demo is smooth and always got a good feedback from newcomers. I suggest that you use the optimized build.

Senza Peso is breathtaking for sure.

Don’t start with a rollercoaster even if some people really want to experience it for their first attempt. If you need to do that. Cyberspace can be a good candidate — but don’t mess with eject button — to stun a bit your subject in less than one minute.

Really don’t select a roller coaster for the first attempt.

Add controls step-by-step

Bringing a subject from Senza Peso to Elite: Dangerous will ruin your first kind efforts to bring people into VR. There are several workflows to continue the VR journey. Understanding of your subject first experience is crucial to select the second demo. If people liked Senza Peso for his journey I will bring them to SightLine: The Chair. If they reacted to the presence feeling, Don’t let go can be a nice tryout. Keep potential jump scare or bad feelings under scrutiny.

Never use it as a first demo especially if you don’t know how people could react to the demo

Adding a non-VR controller is usually the next step. Xbox (360/One) controllers are pretty common and it should be the first controller you should put in subject hands. I really like Mythos of the world Axis for this, but the player need to stand up and recenter himself frequently with the gamepad. Resulting in a nice motion sickness generator. I usually queue this demo after several seated experiences.

A nice concept with a clever use of the camera

Compromise can be found with peaceful demo with use of a controller. Demos like Titans of Space or Lunar Flight suit well. Radial G is a good candidate for racing with a pad and I’m convinced a racing wheels is mandatory to play Assetto Corsa.

A perfect sync between demo display and controller maximize presence feeling.

I except you to die is a mist-have experience which provides a VR adaptation of point and click mechanisms and escape rooms’ enigmas. A nice demo that could be the first with a controller on your demo plan. Also, it’s fun to pitch secret agent background during the setup timeout.

A must have demo for sure.

After several demos, it can be a good time to introduce Windlands. I really like Windlands although it’s extremely hard to recommend it as quite everybody will experience motion sickness. Only if your subject is a regular player with a good inner ear. Try to limit demo to 15-20 minutes in order to prevent motion sickness.

Mixing previous selected experiences with some roller coasters can help you to maximize the variety of feelings. Cyberspace is still a good candidate. Classic roller coaster choices had been narrowed down to quite only title: NoLimits 2! It’s the perfect sandbox to craft roller coaster to fill your VR journey and plenty of them are downloadable.

We can regret such good roller coasters like Helix or Lava Inc. not being updated along the Oculus SDK development. We can only hope old demos will be update with the commercial release of the Oculus headset.

Pushing boundaries

After a dozen of demos, if you want to bring people deeper in VR you have several directions.

Elite: Dangerous is still one of the most impressive game to play with Oculus. Cruise space in your very own ship, feel the void in space, get lost across stars… But you need to be able to cruise a spaceship and remember tons of buttons and commands to be rewarded by those breathtaking feelings. That’s why Elite: Dangerous should be considered like the ultimate experience (even if it’s wrong compared to a motion sim with Assetto Corsa or Elite: Dangerous).

I suggest that you bring the player to tutorials prior to drop him into the solo mode. Travel to station tutorial is also a must do. After those basics, Elite: Dangerous is the perfect candidate for some long solo session.

One of the most promising concept is asymmetrical gameplay applied to Oculus Rift. Keep talking and nobody explodes is a party game designed for VR. Players will help a minesweeper — which is wearing the Oculus — to disarm a bomb by solving puzzles with pen and paper. What it achieve is bringing a virtual reality into the current reality. A strong presence of a fictional event into the reality embed players into the game. This kind of feeling could be compared to the first time you played bowling on Wii with friends. It was nine years ago…

A quick checklist

Always lead a first try to a seated experience without controls.

Don’t demo VorpX, FPS in VR and other partial port (Alien Isolation e.g.)

Never demo a demo you never tried before. Never.

Refresh your demos according to current SDK (or don’t update SDK).

Prevent annoying people from touching, scratching, cuddle, the player.

Don’t let the player alone.

Avoid high luminosity environment when demoing.

Do your best to make the first time into VR enjoyable.

Bonus