After having read its name so many times, today I decided to try Senza Peso for Oculus Rift. Senza Peso is an artistic experience for Oculus Rift made by Kite & Lightning studio. Kite & Lightning is a VR studio that is out since a while and every title that they’ve made has proven to be very cool (for example I tried Insurgent some times ago and it was really well made), so I was quite sure that Senza Peso was something really magnificent, too. And in fact, it was.
They defined this experience “a mini Opera”: I don’t agree that much with the title, because it doesn’t seem opera to me. It’s more like a multisensorial artistic experience, where you live an oniric journey with your eyes while you listen to a lyric of some opera. The journey is full of colors and special effects and this is really a pleasure for your eyes.
Due to the artistical nature of this experience, it’s really hard for me to review it. It’s art, and as such it has only to convey feelings, to give you sensations… you have to live it to understand… I can not say you how you could feel inside it.
All the trip is a journey made with a wooden ship: you go on it and then you travel for surreal places, seeing strange and awesome things. The graphical quality of the experience is awesome and that’s why it is a pleasure for the eyes. But given the artistical nature of the experience, the authors had no choice than making it so wonderful.
Music is in Italian and that made me so proud (but we’re the home country of opera, so it’s quite normal…). It continues to say “Io non voglio resistere al richiamo”: I tried to search the name of the opera but I didn’t find it… maybe it’s a custom song that someone made for Kite & Lightning, who knows. The voice of the singer makes everything so peaceful and dramatic at the same time: you float with this boat on her voice and you travel with your head.
So, the experience is really wonderful. But… there is a big problem and this problem name is “motion sickness”. This experience has not been made taking in mind all the guidelines to reduce motion sickness and you have continuous unrequested camera movements that create a lot of virtual sickness. This is the greatest turndown of this experience.
My final opinion on Senza Peso is that it is really wonderful and you have absolutely to experience it and live that fantastic feelings that it can give you, but only if you’re not that sensible to motion sickness!