There have been “whispers” about more out-of-home amusement VR projects coming their way although it hasn’t entirely been clear who is working on what. With today’s news we can remove Bandai Namco Amusements off of the wonder list as they have announced a new VR development in Japan that opens for a limited time this April.
The VR Zone store front
Called VR ZONE Project i Can, the facility (which the translator bills as a “hotel”) is slated to open on April 15th on the 3rd floor of their Marunouchi Oazo Namco facility. It will be in operation tentatively through October where they will be taking in clients by appointment only to begin. Six games will be available for users to enjoy, including titles that do not use a Head Mounted Display (HMD). Where their new Real Drive dome screen simulation game is on the roster, that is probably part of that; also the picture for their Train Meister game shows a flat display. There is no indication that I found that suggested which brand of HMD would be used but most companies have worked on developing their own since Oculus Rift wasn’t allowing their hardware to be used in commercial applications.
“My eyes, the goggles do nothing!” – Sorry, dumb joke. 😛
The other announced experiences/games include one where you walk on a wood plank above high rise buildings (which reminds me of the projection mapped VR Scale-1); Ski Rodeo which looks like it will be Alpine Racer VR; a zombie/horror game and a title called Argyle Shift which appears to involve anime battle robots and the player on some sort of holographic display. Here are the game images…reminding me why I need to brush up on my Japanese.
The official website for the project is not working at the moment; the news can be found here on a PDF. What are your thoughts on this new VR Amusement setup?
I figure since they are NOT using head mounted displays they must be planning on using projection of some sort?
Should be interesting although I wonder if the power meters and what not will be projected as well.
Keep in mind that it does not state that all of the games will not use HMDs. I imagine the plank walking game and the skiing one will use HMDs.