Digital Discoveries
Hardware lead, Bo Moore, and staff writer, Christian Guyton, enjoy the fruits of developers’ labors
OCULUS RIFT S
I’ve never been a huge fan of VR. I tried a few of the early iterations of the Oculus Rift, and wasn’t too impressed. Of course, the experience has gotten much better over the years. My problem now is that for high-end VR experiences—with both hand and head tracking—you need a complicated setup involving one or more sensors mounted around your room (not to mention ample obstacle-free play area). At least, until now.
I’ve spent some time testing the Rift S, the new flagship VR product from Oculus. Replacing the classic Rift in Oculus’s product suite, the Rift S offers full head and hand tracking without any external sensors. Instead of having to mount base station cameras around the room, the Rift S uses inside-out tracking via a handful of sensors positioned on the headset itself.
The result is a VR experience akin to the previous gold standard, but without the hassle of external sensors. Even just dinking around in the demo games my unit came with, I was impressed with the way VR has evolved. Is it ready to replace traditional gaming yet? Not at all. But VR has come a long way, and will continue to grow as more developers embrace it. $399, www.oculus.com
JUMP
I’m still feeling the effects of the gamestreaming feature from the last issue. Thanks, Google. On the bright side, my research left me in touch with a number of contacts for gaming platforms such as Shadow and Utomik. One that has stuck with me is Jump, a service that downloads games to your PC piecemeal, enabling near-instant access to a strongly curated library of indie titles.
A good variety of games is key to a service like this, and the Jump team has got variety in spades. From fastpaced action to ponderous, story-driven adventures, it wasn’t hard to tally up a list of games for me to work through.
Two games that particularly hooked me were OrionTrail and DiariesofaSpaceport
Janitor. The former is a punishing pixelart jaunt through a weird and wonderful galaxy fraught with random encounters, pop-culture references, and expendable red-shirted crew members, blending text adventure with resource management sim. The latter is an oddly meditative gem; I played a down-on-her-luck alien as she worked her government-subsidized garbage collection job, exploring a sprawling technicolor spaceport. $5 per month, www.playonjump.com