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Blacksite VR (Melbourne) - A (longish) Review


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A belated and promised shout-out to the guys that run Blacksite VR https://www.facebook.com/BlackSiteVR/?hc_ref=SEARCH&fref=nf in Melbourne.

 

Went there early December with some friends, as part of an Arcade / Pinball / Bar crawl. (Pinball Paradise, Bartronica, etc)

 

Blacksite VR have 4 bays for room-scale VR and use the HTC Vive. The vive uses right and left hand motion controllers, plus tracks your body movements in realtime, no lag.

 

In short, it was totally amazing. Mind-blowing amazing. The experience feels real, it truly is 'virtual reality'. The feeling of being in a huge, limitless space feels completely real.

 

We were able to choose the games we wanted to play, from the in game menu (steam VR) they started us off simple, with a game that had you placed in a ravine, with these beastie/troll things that were chucking spears at you, while you used a bow and arrow using both motion controllers, to try and hit them. When the first spear got thrown at me, i almost freaked out and literally jumped out of the way, almost expected to feel the spear thudding into my shoulder. After i stopped flipping out at how real it was, i was able to get into the game. Quickly got tired of that, and wanted to kill zombies!

 

So went straight into the zombie game they had. this was a very simple game, placed you in a dark room with a torch in your left hand, and a pistol in your right hand. you had 4 doors N/S/E/W, and you basically shone the torch around and shot zombies as they came increasingly faster and faster. Trying to keep track of 4 doors at once is difficult, especially as you get further in the game and more zombies start appearing. Soon you are left with a situation when you have to make quick turns with your body to face new directions, and the times where I turned and there was a zombie literally right next to me about to splitch me - it was extremely scary. i can't describe it, never felt real fear before playing this kind of game, but the VR is so real that your senses are totally fooled into the fight or flight instinct. One of my mates found this game too confronting, but the guys were right there to help out, helped him remove the headset and calm down! This is not a guy I would have thought would react this way, but he said he basically had the feeling of intense fear, and it completely threw him for 6.

 

From there tried an FPS game, moving around and physically ducking behind cover was a new experience, but I found the straight FPS game not too interesting, I've lost interest in FPS for years now though, but FPS fans would love it. But again, the feeling of actually being in the rooms, the real feeling of space and movement, fantastic.

 

The guys reccomended a come-down game before returning to reality - just a passive experience where you are a deep-sea diver on the deck of a sunken ship, looking all around you, this was really cool, especially when the MASSIVE whale swum by, I felt I could reach out and touch it. It was a truly peaceful, calming experiience, just being a passive spectator at the bottom of the ocean, made me realise just how many uses VR will have, not just action and gaming.

 

Lastly, the guys that run it were fantastic. So helpful, they stood with you / by you, staying silent and out of the way but immediately stepping in and helping if they could see you having trouble with anything in-game, via the external monitors, or you were struggling with menu operations - something that was a bit tricky. The amount of noobs and freaked out punters they must have to deal with, floundering around in virtual worlds, yet they were cheerful and helpful the whole time, this adds greatly to the experience.

 

Only thing was - too short! 45 minutes went by in the blink of an eye. Would reccomend two consecutive sessions, one to warm up to the experience, one to really get into it.

 

I experienced absolutely no feelings of sickness or nausea, or dizziness, and there was no screen tearing, or any discernible lag. These guys have setup awesome systems that run VR the way it should be. I'm short sighted so usually have to wear glasses all the time, but did not need to wear them for VR. This was kind of cool, cause I actually could, for the first time in decades, see clearly way off into the 'distance'.

 

I'd have to give them 10/10, both for the great hardware and the VR experience, backed up by their flawless service.

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  • 3 weeks later...
How much for the 45 mins?

 

Didn't expect this to be that close to work. Might have to sneak off a long lunch ;)

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

$25 bucks for 45 minutes. Bargain I reckon for the experience!

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