Denny Unger is the President and Creative Director at Cloudhead Games. He talks about his experience of seeing the HTC Vive prototype for the first time with other developers, as well as some of the implications of 360-degree, full-room walkable capabilities as well as two-hand interactions means for VR game design for The Gallery, Six Elements.

Denny & Joel from Cloudhead Games along with Alex from Owlchemy Labs talk about the following:

How it’d change the gameplay for The Gallery. They always wanted to use your hands and to spin around 360, but the technology wasn’t there yet. The HTC Vive matched the vision of what they wanted to do, and it gave them freedom to design the VR experience as they’ve always intended. Started with designing for sit-down experience, then moved to a standing experience, and now designing for a full room and 360-degree turning experience. They have to account for designing for each of these scenarios

VR locomotion is still an open problem because you don’t want to warp around. Trying to build systems to also locomote the volume with a joystick.

Some of the other experiences chosen by Valve. Cloudhead Games had a vision of where VR could go with interacting with a 3D space in an adventure game context.

First time that he’s experienced presence for an extended period of time. Joel from Cloudhead Games talks about his own experience of presence in VR

Simulating jobs with Job Simulator by Owlchemy Labs is about two hands interactions in VR. Watched people and what they did. People expect natural experiences within VR, and if you account for that, then it’s delightful. Throwing something at a robot and having a reaction that is accounted for.

User interactions that are new, and starting to build in interactions into the VR world that parallel what people want to do in real life. Gameplay in VR that require two hands. People tend to just use one hand at first, and it’s hard to understand that you need to use your whole body. Helping to people realize that they can use both hands in VR. Finally have the freedom to use both hands. Leaning and crouching are now natural body movements.

It’s going to apply to so many experiences. Devs will enable what you’ve always wanted to do in VR.

Theme music: “Fatality” by Tigoolio

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