Godzilla Virtual Reality Game Let's Players Crush Cities
Australian motion capture company Logemas has serious proof of concept game.
No longer content to terrorize LEGO minifigs, the kids of the future (and, hell, the adults too) may look down their scaly noses toward Tokyo, 260-feet below, and up their stomping game. A new demo from Australian motion capture company Logemas shows what happens when motion capture technology is infused with virtual reality and a game engine: a technical achievement, sure, but let’s cut to the chase and say it allows users to be Godzilla.
How is this possible? Small dots on the user are tracked by motion capture infra-red cameras that interface with an Unreal game engine plugged into an Oculus Rift so that users can make Godzilla into a verb (as in: “He Godzilla-ed the hell out of that skyscraper”). Animation is streamed 60 times a second.
“There’s an added immersion from being able to interact with the environment — you feel like you have a physical presence in the virtual world when you step on a building and see it crumble and hear it crash,” writes Max, a sales and support engineer at Logemas, on the company blog.
Cool perks Max.
Since there is no technical limit on how many people can be recorded at once, The technology could eventually be put to use for all manner of more useful simulations. In essence, the Godzilla program is just a test. But it’s a beautiful test and it goes to show that a proof of concept can also be fun as hell. Here’s hoping we get the mass market version of this stompulator we desperately need for therapeutic purposes.
