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Mars Tank Demo - 3rd Person Test

andreasng
Honored Guest


Everyone is talking about how amazing it'll be play *input FPS title here* in fully realized vr. Yeah it will be cool - but i think that there is alot more to gain in the 3rd person games realm.

Why? Well, the Oculus allows you to angle your head anyway you want. This is a great feature, wouldn't be anything without it. But what you need for fps games is 100% freedom, and to be honest no one (except 1/1000) will sit in the office chair and turn around in their fps game by rotating 180. It's just too much. Then you combine the degree of freedom, so you can turn your head to turn a little but if you want to turn all the way you need to mouse-aid it.

Also in the first person realm you are likely to expect less disconnect between your senses - since "you are you". However in a third person realm you are the observer, the camera. And you wouldn't expect the camera to experience the gravitational effects of movement.
It is a matter of giving the audience the time needed to figure out the disconnect between what they see and what they feel. The developers will have to help the audience get used to this by not making too much of an intrusion on their senses, and start out slow, simple and gently.

So I say platformers and 3rd person experiences has just as much merit for being interesting as the first person experiences.

Anyway check out this 3rd person test. Drive your little tank forward. Go see the ocean a bit further ahead, see the sun rise and the shadows crawl.

.-o-.

Find it here ->
http://www.sota.dk/stuff/VR_MarsDemo/MarsSwarsDemo.zip

.-o-.

Controls: Standard Unity - WASD or Arrows, Shift makes the tank drive faster, Space jumps (?huh?)
Using an Xbox controller gives a better impression.

Note: Right now the Oculus actually steers the tank in the direction it's looking. I guess this is because the Oculus overwrites the different Axis used in Unity. A bit annoying - But should be easy to overcome.
12 REPLIES 12

aabel
Honored Guest
Nice, it illustrates the potential of 3rd person VR very well. It's not hard to imagine the possibilities!

edulinares
Honored Guest
Two words:

Dark Souls.


Ralf, the guy making the vorpx driver, said 3rd person games like Mass Effect work very nice with the Rift, to his surprise. It`s very obvious to me that it would work nice, I mean why wouldn`t it?

andreasng
Honored Guest
That is exactly how i feel as well. All I hear is fps here and fps there.

Punisher
Explorer
Looks good, probably impossible to get sick playing like this too.

andreasng
Honored Guest
Well it's not impossible, but it does make it a bit harder for the nausia to kick in.

Anonymous
Not applicable
"edulinares" wrote:
It`s very obvious to me that it would work nice, I mean why wouldn`t it?


Because the mother nature put our eyes directly the ours heads. And not sometwhere behind/above...

like this?
http://www.instructables.com/id/Viewing-Myself-in-3rd-Person/

Gerald
Expert Protege
I agree - I think that being able to really look over a battlefield in a real time strategy game or a world in Civilization will be awesome. I especially imagine a god game being a very good fit.
check out my Mobile VR Jam 2015 title Guns N' Dragons

PaulWhite
Honored Guest
"andreasng" wrote:

Note: Right now the Oculus actually steers the tank in the direction it's looking. I guess this is because the Oculus overwrites the different Axis used in Unity. A bit annoying - But should be easy to overcome.



If you look at the OVRCameraController script, there is a checkbox that reads, "Tracker Rotates Y". Uncheck this to fix that issue. Now your vehicles can be controlled with the look left/right.

StanleyP
Honored Guest
I was playing with the unreal dev kit and loaded a level with some of the vehicles in it, when you enter the vehicle it goes to 3rd person view. It worked really well, i don't see why it can't be used more.

You need to be able move the camera position relative to the vehicle. The UDK implementation centres the view forward relative to the direction the vehicle is travelling, you can look left and right. This works rather well.

I like zig-zagging and leaving dust trails 🙂