Some months ago, when I was in Los Angeles to attend AWE, I had the opportunity of trying one of the experiences offered by Dreamscape, one of the leading companies for LBVR (Location-based VR) entertainment. It has been my first time at Dreamscape, so let me tell you how it was!
(And by the way, thanks to the Dreamscape people for having offered me the ticket so that I could do this review)
Before the experience
The Dreamscape venue I selected was located in Los Angeles, inside a pretty big shopping center. This reminded me a bit of what happens in China, where gaming arcades are inside shopping malls. This way people can spend their afternoon shopping, eating something, and enjoying some games together.
When I arrived, I was greeted by the girls at the reception, and then I was asked to fill in my data in a form on a tablet, and accept some terms and conditions (something like “if you die, you die”). After that, I was asked to wait in the waiting room while the experience room was prepared for me.
You may think that this wait was the boring part of my time spent there, but actually, I liked it a lot. The waiting room has been well conceived for two purposes: to stay comfy with your friends and put you in the right mood for the experience. You can have fun with your friends by staying there and chatting, getting comfortable, and buying some beverages that are available in a fridge. There is also a photo booth to make some photos and receive them via e-mail. There is a little shop where to buy some merch. There are so a few things to do. At the same time, this space puts you in the right mood because the room exhibits some objects related to the experiences. For instance, for the Alien Zoo experience, there were some cute weird plastic animals around with which you could take a picture. And for the Curse Of The Lost Pearl, the experience I tried, there were some tables with on it some fake old newspapers telling the news of a disappeared girl, some collectibles of her, etc…
I liked staying there, taking pictures, and analyzing all the objects, trying to understand what the experience would have been about. It helped me in getting into the mood. The items were crafted very well: if I didn’t know that I was in a gaming arcade, I could have imagined that the story the newspaper was talking about was real. And this helped in feeling the VR experience more real later on. I didn’t regret the time spent there… the only problem was that I was completely alone, so I felt a bit lonely.
After a while, a hostess come and asked me to enter another room to live the true experience.
The experience
I found myself in something that looked like a locker room, featuring various seats with around all the hardware I had to wear: an HP reverb headset, some weird trackers (for sure not the Vive ones) I had to put on my hands and feet, and a backpack PC. The hostess guided me during the whole process of installation of the devices on my body, and so everything went very smoothly.
After that, I entered the main area, which was a square area (something like a ring) of maybe 4m x 4m, with a metallic railing around it. After I was ready, the experience started. I will spoil some details of the experience, I warn you. The story is about a smart scientist, Lavan, which invented the Haptioscope, a special device that lets you live movies as if they were true experiences (I guess it reminds you of something…), and then she went missing. At the beginning of the experience you turn on this Haptioscope and run a movie on it, that is “The Curse Of The Lost Pearl”. The projector turns on, and you see a green land in 3D on the wall in front of you where the projector is projecting the movie. Something happens and then at a certain point, you are left with this setup, until you understand you can enter the projection of the Haptioscope, and enter the experience as if it was real. You find so yourself completely in another dimension, where you are in a temple inside a jungle. I liked a lot the parallelism between the Haptioscope and virtual reality, and in particular, the very immersive virtual reality offered by Dreamscape. This gives a very fine context to the experience. Also, the moment when I entered the movie was rather cool.
After that, I had to find my way inside the temple, understand where to go, and solve some very lightweight puzzles (the experience was very straightforward). Sometimes I had the opportunity of grabbing some objects which were real objects that had a virtual counterpart I could see, or of interacting with objects (like a lever) that were both virtual and real. This was cool because the real objects were physical, so added a haptic dimension to the virtual objects I was interacting with. But at the same time, I have to say that the tracking was slightly off the expected position, and this broke a bit of the magic. Also, while it was cool having these “realistic” objects, they made all the other objects feel faker, because all the rest of the experience had not this haptic effect, so you felt more of the lack of it. Walking in the experience was made smartly because it made me walk round and round, so I had the impression I was walking a lot, while I never exited the 4 squared meters ring.
Graphics were good, PCVR-level. Not the best I have seen in VR, Half-Life: Alyx is better, but for sure well made. The same for the audio. There were some special effects sometimes like the floor below me that could vibrate, or some water that could be sprayed on me. This added realism and some specialty, considering I could not have this kind of special FXs at home.
It was a bit sad that I was alone, so I could not enjoy the fun of doing something together with other people, especially people that are not from my ecosystem. Because you know, for me was a bit weird that I was able to detect all the tricks used (real-virtual matching, redirected walking, etc…) because I was enjoying the experience with an analytical eye. I would have liked to be there with someone just having fun and that maybe was enjoying VR for one of the first times in his life. For sure this would have made my experience more fun.
The experience lasted around 20 minutes and finished with a very fun moment that reminded me a bit of a rollercoaster… and I love rollercoasters in VR. And this was not a standard rollercoaster with a headset, but it had the vibrating floor, wind, and other special effects that made it amazing. But it lasted just a little and then the whole experience finished.
After the experience: my impressions
I was guided to go again to the locker room, I removed all the devices from me, said goodbye, and went away.
I sat down on a chair in the shopping center and stopped myself to think a bit about my feelings. In general, I liked my experience at Dreamscape: the waiting room was very well conceived, the onboarding went smooth, and the experience was nice. It was a bit lightweight, but this is fine because it must be enjoyable by people that are new to VR. And I appreciated that it had some elements that I could not experience at home, like having real objects I could touch or the vibrating floor that is always cool. I was left with a positive impression.
But at the same time, I found it to be very short: 20 minutes is just enough to have a taste of VR, and they are not even cheap. The experience ends when the fun has just started. And then I wondered how much all of this is superior to living VR at home. Of course, I’m biased because I’m a VR professional and at home, I can use both mobile VR and PC VR, something that is still quite uncommon. I don’t have the special FX of the wind and the water, but are they worth going to another place, paying money, just to live a short adventure? In my opinion, not much. It may be good for people that not have a VR headset at home and want to enjoy immersive realities, but I think that it is not enough of an upgrade for VR owners to go there.
And honestly seeing the location so desert was a bit underwhelming. Sure, it was a working day, in the morning, so it was to be expected, but this put in front of my eyes one of the common problems of location-based entertainment: you have some moments when there is no one and other moments when there are too many people.
The impression I had is that LBVR is still at the pre-pandemic status: the pandemic hit it hard at the moment it was growing the most and VR at home was still struggling, and some analysts were convinced that LBVR would have been the most successful type of VR experience ever. But now the conditions have changed: many people in the US own a Quest 2 or have a friend who owns it; and what was a game with cool graphics in 2019 is not anymore like that in 2022.
I think that LBVR should find a way to renew its offering so that to offer something truly different than the experience a player can have at home... maybe investing more in the physical interactions between the users (something that my friend Cix Liv is doing with Rek.tv for instance), in deeper experiences, astonishing graphics, and special hardware.
Only this way it will have sense to go to a physical location to enjoy something truly different from what you can have at home. And I truly hope this happens, because I wish the best for VR arcade owners and to great people at Dreamscape.