07. Case Studies
A lot can be learned from studying other people’s VR experiences. Each experience is an experiment that can be studied to inform your own design decisions. We’ve picked out several VR apps we found interesting and analyzed them. After you’ve read through them, you’ll be prompted to pick, play, and analyze a VR experience of your choice!
1. Bolt Casino Virtual Reality Poker
Mode: Sitting 180 degrees
The Bolt Casino VR poker app is a great example of where 180 seated experiences excel. Poker is traditionally a seated game played around a table, so it immersively matches a mode where you’re seated and facing forward.
The game also makes good use of object physics to increase immersion. Unlike a 2D poker game where you’re pressing buttons to call and raise your bets, this VR game tries to mimic a real poker table as much as possible. Notable examples of this are the ability to push/throw chips into the center betting pile, the ability to “fold” (where you give up for the round) by tossing your cards into the center of the table, and the ability to interact socially with your opponent via voice, head, and hand gestures.
Of course, as the game is in VR, it’s also added some fun things that can’t be done in reality, such as spawning poker themed objects, and providing a chat window for live streamers to interact with their audience. If you watch the video at XXX and 7:25, you’ll notice the streamer’s enjoyment on being able to grab a cigar, hold it up to their face, and smoke it. Obviously they’re not smoking a real cigar, but the interaction holds close enough to reality that they physically blow in and out. The streamer also had fun throwing toy trucks at their opponent, and using the trucks to move their chips around.
One consideration for this of course is that the ability to throw things at your opponent could be abused. No one wants objects repeatedly thrown at their face, virtual or otherwise. There exist known avenues for dealing with this, such as a Block a Player option which disables your ability to see your opponent’s extraneous objects. However, there are many creative solutions yet to be discovered, as VR anti-trolling mechanisms are an active area of discovery.
2. Ripcoil
Mode: Standing 180 degrees
Ripcoil is a great example of the strengths and weaknesses of 180 degree VR. Since you’re always facing your opponent and have no in-game reason to ever turn around, the game is able to maintain a high level of immersion. The game uses a locomotion scheme where you move left and right by leaning in that direction, which can be somewhat unbalancing, yet adds to the immersion by making you feel like you’re actually riding a hovercraft. They make the disorientation and loss of balance associated with artificial locomotion in standing VR a feature.
However, like with all artificial locomotion, player’s susceptible to motion sickness will feel it after only 5-10 minutes of play. The brain connection between leaning and motion lessens the sickness, but it is still an issue that will limit play time and act as a deterrent.
The gameplay itself, namely grabbing disks out of the air and throwing them to bounce into the opponent's goal, is a fun re-imagining of Pong. Experiencing physics first person is one of VR’s strengths, so creating an experience with hovering disks takes that strength then provides a novel twist only possible in VR.
3. Fruit Ninja VR / Zen Blade
Mode: Standing 180 degrees
VR games don’t need to be complex to be incredibly fun. These ports of the popular mobile game Fruit Ninja maintain the ethos of the original; create a game with one control mechanism, satisfying visual effects, and deep levels of mastery.
There’s something about holding a samurai sword in VR that’s incredibly satisfying. The simplicity of the game allows anyone to pick up and play it, regardless of prior VR experience, making it a great introductory game. Few VR games can be picked up and immediately understood by a random person off the street, making it a good pick for VR arcade setups as well.
While it’s possible to make 360 degree modes, these games stick to 180 so players can focus on cutting fruit, rather than spinning around looking for it.
4. The Lab: Xortex 26XX
Mode: Roomscale
Valve’s “The Lab” won Unity’s 2016 VR Experience of the Year award, and as such is a trove of great VR design. This analysis will be focused on one experience in it where you control a drone that shoots robots, but I suggest checking out all its experiences.
Visually, Xortex does something very cool by placing you in a small chamber with a bright pixelated screen on one wall. At first your eye is drawn to the screen and you think the graphics in your VR headset are worse than you remember. Then your gaze moves off the screen to the rest of your room, which is high definition. The contrast in quality helps usher in presence and make you feel like you’re actually in the room.
Mechanically, Xortex functions similarly to a typical arcade wave-based shooter, with levels and bosses where you try to survive as long as possible. However, what sets Xortex apart is its use of 3-dimensional roomscale and perfect hand tracking. By making your drone’s position analogous to your hand position, the game provides a completely new control mechanic that lets you naturally weave and dodge in a way that would be nearly impossible with button-based controls. Even a complete beginner can pick up the game and have fun, while a veteran can use their dexterity, situational awareness, and knowledge of threats to get high scores.
Since the game is roomscale, there is a fair amount of space in which to maneuver your drone. That being said, the enemies spawn from one direction, minimizing 360 turning (and possible chord tripping). Lastly of note, the music and special effects of the game are some of the best out there, adding immensely to the already immersive experience.
5. Job Simulator
Mode: Roomscale / Standing 180
Job Simulator won Unity’s 2016 VR Game of the Year award, and for good reason. Designed from the ground up as an exploration of hand controller physics, the game acts more like a playground sandbox than your typical game.
One of the interesting design decisions made is the hiding of your hands when you pick objects up. What the developers found is that since the object you’re holding is still tracked, players don’t really notice the hands disappearing. They decided to go with this mechanic since they found it didn’t break presence as much as other alternatives, such as a non-perfect grab animation (it would be impossible to come up with an animation for all possible positions your hand could grab each object), or a grab that moved each object to a set position on the hand. They decided the other alternatives were clunky and more immersion breaking (not to mention more development intensive).
They also decided that in addition to being able to pick objects up, they wanted you to be able to hit them. Getting the right balance between being able to pick objects up without accidentally swatting them away is not trivial, but through iterative development they succeeded fairly well.
The art style they chose was also well fit for VR. Knowing the strain of intense graphics on processors, they opted for a stylized cartoony look, allowing them to use that processing for other things like physics.
As a multiplatform game, Job Simulator was custom designed for every possible configuration a user could have. On the Vive, they focus most of the play in one direction, but allow for turning and make use of objects behind you. Depending on a user’s play space, the environment scales dynamically, so that those with big rooms can take advantage but users with min-spec rooms can still play. On the Oculus they redesigned all of the interaction to be 180 degrees, but still allow the player to look behind them. On Playstation VR they did the same thing, but with a slightly more confined area. This level of customized support has allowed them to maximize the enjoyment of every player no matter their setup, but took development time away from additional levels and features.