Part two of my resumée of my trip to Taiwan. Yesterday I told you about some cool companies like Brogent and some interesting hardware like zSpace. Today, I want to continue with other amazing stuff: do you know that I tried the Japanese LBVR game HADO, for instance?
VAR Live
I have tried VAR Box by VAR Live: it is a little booth for Location Based VR experiences with all hardware and software already included. It lets you play alone or against other players (up to four). It is a bit like HOLOGATE, but just for a single player.
The VR experience that I tried there was nice: I was in a building where I had to shoot at the silhouette of enemies while keeping the hostages safe. It was a game of speed and precision and it was interesting… especially when the enemies used the hostages as shields to protect themselves, making the game more difficult.
HADO
When I interviewed Eido from HADO, I thought I couldn’t be able to try his innovative XR e-sports solution unless I went to Japan. Actually, I have been able to try two HADO games in Kaohsiung: Kart and Monster Battle.
HADO Kart
The HADO Kart is an augmented reality kart that you play with a pair of HoloLens on your head. You are in this little car and you can move freely in a big square space while seeing virtual coins and bombs all over it. The MR magic is possible thanks to big QR codes that are installed at the corner of the attraction and that make sure that all players see the same virtual elements in the same position in the real world. That is, the QR Codes allow for the calibration of real and virtual elements.
The purpose of the game is making the highest score possible by getting the most virtual coins in a specified amount of time. There are different kind of coins to take, but also different kind of bombs that try to stop you in this journey.
I found the idea very nice and I had fun feeling a bit like Mario, getting coins while running on a real car. Augmented reality empowers the kart experience and could really give new life to karts in amusement parks. Furthermore, the use of AR makes you play in full safety since you see your surroundings.
The problem is in the field of view of HoloLens. For the first minute of the experience, I was looking at the floor, looking for a track to follow, and I had a hard time understanding what I had to do. I could just see the road plus some weird lights and elements popping up sometimes. I was puzzled.
Then, at some moment, I put my head straight and I finally started seeing the coins that I had to take. The little FOV of the HoloLens is really a killer for this experience since makes hard for you to have a clear picture of where the coins and the bombs are.
So, I liked it, I had fun, but it will express its true potential only when the hardware will be ready.
Hado Monster Battle
Hado Monster Battle is another game by HADO, this time an action one. You wear a Cardboard on your head and a phone on your right wrist. The Cardboard is set on passthrough mode, and lets you see monoscopic augmented reality all around you.
In this AR, you see monsters attacking you and you can move in the space to dodge their attacks. Using some kind of tracking technology (maybe ARCore, or Vuforia that exploits the background of the wall as a big marker), Meleap has created a 6 DOF Cardboard and this is interesting.
To attack the enemies, you have to perform a fast movement of your hand, a bit like a punch in the air, to throw some magic bullets (a Hadoken) at them. If you kill all the enemies, boss included, you win.
The game was pretty nice. The fact that it mixed shooting and dodging, exploiting the whole big play area, was surely interesting. And everything was implemented using just two mobile phones.
Anyway, it had also big downsides: the AR was monoscopic (it exploited the camera of the phone). The punch detection worked only 60% of the time, so it was quite frustrating. Then continuously having to perform that strong and fast punching movement, made my arm tired very fast.
In summary: nice idea, but it needs improvements.
Viveland
I’ve visited Viveland, the VR Arcade of HTC Vive in Kaohsiung. It is inside a commercial center (as always in China), so that you can have fun while you go shopping.
Viveland is not terribly big, but it has a good number of attractions… I would say something like 20 VR games to give an order of magnitude. There are only VR games in it and they are of different kinds: single player and multiplayer; action games and horror games; etc…
The design of the space is nice, and there are Vive logos everywhere. The workers care at you and they are very attentive on hygiene: every user is always provided a hygiene mask. The first impression has been very positive.
But actually, I haven’t come out very satisfied by it. I have been able to try only two attractions but I have also spoken with other people that have tried other games… and the general impression is that for every experience there is always a “but”. “Amazing, BUT it was too short”, “Adrenaline, BUT the tracking didn’t work”, “I had fun BUT the graphics were weird” and so on.
For instance, I have tried a plank game, one of the many where you walk on a physical plank on the floor while in VR you see that you are walking on a plank that is in a very high position, for instance attached to a skyscraper. The effect, as always, was impressive, and I was scared by the idea of walking on this plank. BUT the experience lasted like 1 minute. It was so simple and short that I had the impression of having completely wasted one of the only two free coupons that I had.
The other experience was an action game inside a green room (so that to allow for mixed reality videos… BUT there was not a display showing mixed reality anywhere). The game was about going in a building and shooting at enemies until you got to a big boss you had to destroy. There was adrenaline in that game and I love pure action games like Robo Recall. BUT the graphical effects were too rough and the tracking glitched continuously, so it was hardly playable.
I am a bit puzzled by Viveland. I liked it, BUT I think it can improve a lot.
VR Film Zone
If going to Viveland had pros and cons, the experience with a VR cinema in the surroundings has been mostly negative.
The VR Film Zone charges users to watch VR storytelling experiences. The environment is nice and for instance I loved all the design chairs onto which we could enjoy the static non-interactive experiences.
The venue lets users try static 360 content all together in a cozy VR cinema and then there are also dedicated stations for real-time rendered interactive content, that you can enjoy in some little rooms equipped with Vive Pros.
I say that the experience was a bit disappointing mostly for three reasons:
- The three experiences that I tried were not my genre at all. The quality was nice and some were also quite original, but I have not enjoyed my time with them. One was “Firebird la Peri”: that has actually a good review score on Steam, but that I found boring. Maybe it was because of the context: if I pay to play in a VR cinema, I expect mindblowing experiences, not just good ones. And since I already play with VR in my office, I have very high standards. This may not be true for all the people visiting this arcade of course… but confirms me the impression that once a lot of people will have a VR headset, most present-time VR arcades will shut down;
- The building was in a place were few people passed-by… this means that gathering new customers will be hard for the cinema;
- Of course, it was not cheap. Trying an experience like Firebird costed something like 7$ if I remember well, for around 20 minutes of experience. Personally, I would never spend that amount of money for this kind of out-of-home entertainment.
I am not very optimistic about the future of this VR cinemas after having tried this experience. Unless they find a way to make the experience more compelling, once VR will be widespread, they risk closing.
And that’s it for today! As always I’m very happy to discuss with you about my Taiwanese journey here in the comments or on social media. Feel free to answer me whatever question.
And stay tuned because in the next (and last) episode of this series, I will talk also about the Vive Pro Eye!
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