Zero Latency 2.0: New Levels In Virtual Reality
When I tried it in mid-2015, I was blown away by Zero Latency's immersive virtual reality — completely wireless, free roaming, warehouse-sized VR, built in Melbourne.
Almost two years on, the fundamentals are the same, but the Zero Latency experience is more refined than it has ever been. And that means new things are possible.
Since August 2015, Zero Latency has opened free-roam spaces in Tokyo, Japan at the Joypolis amusement park. In Madrid, Spain. In Orlando, Florida as V-Play Reality. The company that started in a Melbourne warehouse has expanded to three new continents.
New spaces that the company is expanding into internationally, it's found, are generally around 200 square feet in size rather than the nearly 400 of the North Melbourne warehouse.
That's a significantly smaller play area, but it never feels like you're confined to one location — both tricks of gameplay and level design, like in-game elevators to re-orient players in the opposite direction, and the complete escapism of virtual reality, both contribute to a complete loss of the sense of where you are in the outside world.
Because the hardware is newer, it's more powerful despite being smaller and lighter. The custom VR backpack — built for Zero Latency by an Australian military supplier — has enough graphical grunt to power games that look better and run more smoothly...
Zero Latency is introducing three new games as part of its first big overhaul. The first is Singularity, a sci-fi corridor shooter that feels equal parts Aliens and System Shock....
Engineerium doesn't use weapons, so players have their hands free. It's a physics puzzler, asking teams to explore a floating stone maze. Despite having their feet on terra firma, virtual reality means players walk on ceilings and through spiraling gravity-defying courses. It has soft lilting ambient music, too — a point of contention in VR development — that lends a sense of escapism and wonder to the already fantastical ancient Egypt meets Alice in Wonderland environment that players wander around.
Tickets are the same $88 price per person as the experience launched with in 2015, and that gets you anywhere between 45 minutes and 60 minutes in-game.
See the full story here: https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/03/zero-latency-2-0-new-levels-in-virtual-reality/