Interview: Frank Soqui, Intel’s General Manager of Virtual Reality
...And, at the Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Intel is pushing the technology hard - after all, you need high end PC hardware to make the most of VR, so anything which drives CPU sales is definitely a good thing.
The one sticking point, though, remains the lack of truly killer titles and applications. Even Intel's own Frank Soqui, the General Manager of the company's VR division, admits that we're still waiting for the content that's really going to make VR sing.
"Well, for me 'here' has a specific meaning," Soqui says when I ask him, after pointing out that it is a kind of nebulous thing right now. "But I look at the level of industry investment; I'm looking at the hardware capabilities that are there. I'm looking at the cross-sector investments that are being made, not just in gaming, but they're getting made commercially, in the enterprise. I look at price points coming down, at the quality of the experience - I think that's here."
"What's not here," he says, "is the compelling content."
....
The first was an upcoming game, one that I've been excited about for a while - Star Trek: Bridge Crew. The game pretty much does what it says on the tin, placing you on a starship bridge, as either Captain, Helm, Tactical, or Engineer. It can be played solo, with AI in each position apart from yours, but it's ideally a co-op experience, with a live player in each position. The demo shuffled you through each of them, showing off how each role plays, and it was pretty amazing. I'm a Star Trek fan, so may be biased, but the sense of presence was stunning. Using controllers, I could look down at my virtual hands as they manipulated various ship functions, and it really was just like in the movies.
I may have gotten a little quietly emotional. For me, it's the first true killer app of VR. When I pointed this out to Frank, he predictably called me a big nerd, and I'm not going to deny it.
"For me," Soqui went on, talking about the game that was his 'ah ha!' moment, "it was playing a game where my avatar was a woman, and I looked down, and... Wow! I'm in someone else's body!"
"I've talked to film makers about this," he says, warming up to the topic, "about empathy. How does it feel to be in someone else's shoes?"
The second impressive use of VR was in eSports broadcasting. Watching a stream of a game online is nothing new, but what Intel's aiming for is letting viewers get inside these matches - virtually. There's something very compelling about the chance to be virtually present in the arena for a big eSports match, and even more compelling about then being able to actually get inside the game, to watch it from any angle. In fact, finding new ways to present eSports to wider, more diverse crowds is one of Intel's big challenges in growing competitive gaming.
See the full story here: http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/453691,interview-frank-soqui-intels-general-manager-of-virtual-reality.aspx