Today a large cardboard box was delivered to my front porch, containing a brand new Oculus VR headset. I unpacked it at lunchtime, and then while the girls were watching TV this evening, I had a little play around. It was … incredible.
I’ve used VR headsets a couple of times in the past and I continue to be amazed at how immersive they are. My wife and I spent about an hour and a half playing The Climb, a rock climbing game that gave me incredible feelings of vertigo as I looked down from the top of a mountain. It made me so tense that my toes cramped as I tried to grip.
We watched some underwater footage from a coral reef – again, it’s like the greatest IMAX theatre you’ve ever been in, because you really are in the middle of the picture. And then we climbed some more.
Graphics are ok. But that’s the strange thing about VR; they don’t need to be photorealistic. The way it covers your whole field of vision means you can be captivated without it being the highest resolution ever. So this was definitely a fun toy to buy.
Downsides: strap is hard to adjust and I can’t comfortably fit my glasses under the goggles, so I either have to buy custom prescription lenses for the headset, or operate in a lower resolution. It’ll do for now. I also can’t share games with my wife; so we play as the same person on the headset, rather than being able to compete. Maybe that means I buy another headset. Oh crumbs …