Second Life and Virtual Worlds
Cyan Worlds is the maker of the Myst series of games. A couple of years ago they started a Kickstarter project named Obduction. Obduction will be the first PLAYABLE VR game released. I think the definition of playable is probably the key to that statement.
Previously planned to release in June this year, a number of reasons came together to move Cyan to shift the release date to July 26, 2016. Click the Kickstarter link above for the reasons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1INKH_iBak8&feature=youtu.be
Quoting: Welcome to Obduction, Cyan’s highly anticipated spiritual successor to Myst. This teaser trailer finally pulls back the curtain for a sneak peek of what to expect. Obduction is scheduled for release in June 2016.
A couple of months and I’ll have a copy…
If you are a long time reader, you know I came from the Myst gaming community. I am a big fan of Myst Online: Uru Live. Cyan Worlds the maker of Uru has been working on a new game for a couple of years: OBDUCTION.
Game Tyrant has an article about their experience with OBDUCTION at the Cyan offices. See: Exclusive: We Played OBDUCTION, the Spiritual Successor to MYST and it is Brilliant.
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.
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.