Mario Kart VR Arcade GP at VR Zone Portal London, impressions in description скачать в хорошем качестве

Mario Kart VR Arcade GP at VR Zone Portal London, impressions in description

I had the opportunity to visit the O2 and their VR area while visiting friends in London. While I was there they opened a Mario Kart VR section. My impressions below. Link to the venue: https://www.hollywoodbowl.co.uk/vr HARDWARE We got to wear the business edition Vive, it's like the normal one just with blue accents. It was decked out with the Deluxe Audio Strap but with the headphones removed, instead we got to wear separate wired headsets for audio. Beneath the VR headset we wore one-time use ninja masks for hygienic purposes. On our hands we wore rubber straps holding the Vive Trackers, you put your thumb through a hole and tightened it with velcro. The motion rig had pretty limited actuation, but I think the slight movement and rumbling was enough to make the whole experience easier to cope with, even if it's artificial karting. The steering wheel had very solid force feedback, I did not investigate the rig closer to discern brands of anything, but it felt like a serious wheel. The whole setup was rigid. We had throttle and break pedals, a bit cramped for me being 190cm tall, and sadly the chair was not possible to adjust. GAME The first thing that struck me was the very loud audio, I'm not sure if I could adjust it, but it was plenty noisy. I do have a bit sensitive/non-ruined hearing so might not be too bad for others. There was automatic voice com between the players, not sure if it was positional, but it worked well enough. The whole race is a single track, but there were transition portals which fades to white that I assume teleported me to a different part of the level. A big number of typical Mario Kart things are features in this one race though, which felt really nice for an old Mario Kart: Double Dash! player. For the whole race, I don't think I used the break even once. Full throttle all the way! So it's far from a driving simulator, but I think that's to be expected. To pick up power-ups you just stretch out your arm and they attach to your hand. I consciously closed my hands on things, which honestly made it easier to just perform the actions, I think. Also opening my hand when throwing objects at others, gesture recognition seemed to work very well. Getting attacked would spin the vehicle around you, but not you as a player, which I appreciate. Artificial rotation still gets me pretty badly. Luckily when turning it's a player initiated rotation which is like driving in real life, if you have the wheel it's hard to get sick. Driving felt pretty simplistic, just full throttle and go, I don't think there was any power sliding or anything. Of course being thrown into the game without much to go on than where to place my hands and feet, I might have missed a mechanic or two, I'd have to play multiple times to figure that out. It didn't seem like AI were boosting off though, if they had I'd have figured I was missing something. I think there was only two types of power-ups, green shells and the hammer, but honestly that is probably OK considering you have to learn the game at the same time as playing. CONCLUSION Definitely worth my £8 for ~4 minutes of racing. Mario Kart is very nostalgic, having played most of them from the SNES original up to the Wii U. If you have the possibility to try this out, I think it's worth it if only to get the haptic force-feedback experience. Even if the motion platform looks fairly tame, the rumble and shaking sells the whole thing quite a bit, and again, the wheel feels good, better than my G27 at home at least. PONDERINGS While the game could work as a home use title, I think in its' current state it would be short lived. The biggest problem would likely be that it now consists, from what I can tell, a single level. While the level is very varied itself it would get old fairly quickly. To me it is pretty clearly a purpose-made arcade title. Controls and hardware requirement would also have to change to make it a consumer title. To have hands working you'd likely play with controllers handling a virtual wheel, meaning zero physical feedback. If you actually have a wheel, you'd have to somehow mount controllers on the outside of your hands for the powerups, or make them triggered by button presses.