![]() ![]() NATHAN: I remember I saw you touch it, and as soon as you reached out - we’re so used to no feedback in VR, so as soon as you touched it I saw you pull your hand back. There’s a point where one of the dinosaurs reaches over the railing, and you reach over and there’s actually something to touch when you reach out. MARTIN: It’s just like touring a zoo, but it’s impossible creatures in an impossible place. Alien Zoo runs for about 15 minutes and you’re with five other people you can see, based on avatars you’ve chosen. As soon as you have your VR headset on they remove the curtain and you walk through. There’s a curtain in front of you, but you can’t see the rest of the space. They have an on-boarding section where you put your computer backpack on, and the reflectors for your hands and feet. NATHAN: So in Alien Zoo, six people at a time will go into the Alien Zoo. So getting to specifics, you guys were just in LA promoting Awake, but managed to squeeze in two LBE experiences: Secrets of the Empire and Alien Zoo. There’s even things like railings, doorways, handles you can feel. But almost all the new experiences we’ve tried have props in them, you can connect what you’re seeing in virtual space to the real world. Previously it was completely virtual, such as in an HTC Vive where you would just have a 3x3m space. What we also saw last week with the new experiences is that the physical world is part of the experience now. I think that anyone I know would get some fun and some value out of it. It was completing catering to non-techies. LBE is very accessible, it’s easy to experience. ![]() But the stuff that we tried last week, you’d be quite happy putting mum into. You look at who you would’ve sent to IMAX, or existing LBEs, it was very much a hobbyist or enthusiast kind of thing. NATHAN: Yes! And that’s the thing that’s different as well. As a VR maker, I felt two things: there was me, the 10 year old boy, that's wanted this since I was a kid and was really excited, and then there’s the other part - the content maker, but that's a whole other thing. But with this, it’s unexpected and it’s surprising. With room-scale - and that’s the best version we’ve seen so far - you’re still in a pen, you’ve got to kind of design everything to fit within the limitations of what that offers. "You have a haptic feedback vest, so you can get shot - and it’s incredible, it makes you squeal." It’s a free roam experience, you can see your body to varying degrees, you can go in it with another person, there’s 4D tactile elements to it, so you’re doing things. MARTIN: You can do the kind of things you really want to do in VR in these experiences. MARTIN: We’ve heard a lot about Location Based Entertainment, so we decided to get out there and try it for ourselves so we’d know exactly what we’re talking about. It’s different from any home user experience: it’s something that’s really social, something that has low barrier to entry for audiences - it doesn’t really require you to know anything about VR or how to play games. But I think what we saw last week is the promise of what LBE can really be for VR. It’s a nice setup, they’ve got great stuff in there. It’s been talked about for maybe six months or so, but prior to now all we’ve really seen is IMAX VR, which is not a significant improvement on what you could be doing at home. NATHAN: I think the LBE market is finally evolving. Let’s get straight into it - what was your main takeaway from your experiences with Location Based Entertainment in LA? Hey guys, thanks for taking the time to talk about your time in LA. "LBE experiences use props, wind and heat to help you connect what you’re seeing in virtual space to the real world." LBE is lauded as the future of Virtual Reality: so when Start VR co-founders, Nathan Anderson and Martin Taylor, headed to LA, we were excited to sit down with them and hear all about their experiences with the newest developments in VR. These experiences physically locate the players in a custom-built room, equipped with high-end VR devices that are either installed locally or worn as a backpack. Location Based Entertainment (LBE) is the talk of the town, from big-budget immersive experiences such as Ghostbusters: Dimension, to game-changing arcade experiences like Mario Kart VR. ![]()
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