I am a Myst games fan. I am looking forward to Cyan World’s new game Obduction.

Hayden Dingman at PCWorld wrote an article about Obduction having live-action Non-Player-Characters (NPC). You can see live-action NPC’s in a video of Senza PesoI (below – link), a trailer for an Oculus VR experience. If you have a VR Headset, the video is in Oculus format.

https://youtu.be/lrq0KRbRk1U

Apparently Obduction will work with Oculus and similar VR headsets. The Cyan peeps rant into the problem of how to put video of RL actors into a virtual world and not break the immersion. While some games have animated avatars (in SL we call them bots) Cyan found that outside their expertise and thus too expensive for them to do. Since this game is funded by a kickstarter project the budget is constrained. They looked for a cheaper way.

Their solution is to film with 2 GoPro gamers to create 3D video. They use a green-screen room in the basement of Cyan’s studio. The character can be placed into the virtual world. You can see that in the video above.

I think the idea is to be similar to what Cyan has done in the past. When they reach a point where they need to tell some of the story, they move to a cut scene and the NPC tells you whatever is needed by the story line. It would be rather jolting to go from a VR experience to a 2D movie. This style of video cut scene will allow them to maintain the illusion of the world they are building.

Look for more details about Obduction to appear in August 2015.