If Virtual Reality Demos were a game of Bingo, I’d be shouting out and waving my card in the air.

The PlayStation VR was the last of the major HMDs (Head Mounted Displays for the less geeky amongst us) that I hadn’t yet tried, so it was with titillation that I unpacked the box that contained my loan from Sony this week.

There was, understandably, quite a long wait to get that loan, however, so by now there are many (MANY) in-depth reviews available on the web, done by people with quite a bit more time to play games than I can manage these days. So if you’re after one of those knit-picking, dissecting accounts full of technical minutiae, you won’t find it here. This is a brief account of my experience, from the perspective of a VR fangirl.

The PlayStation was the last of the current VR headsets I hadn't yet tried
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I won’t compare the PlayStation VR to mobile headsets such as the Samsung Gear, Daydream or even Cardboard, nor to the Microsoft HoloLens, as mobile VR and Augmented/Mixed reality provide quite different types of experiences. The PlayStation VR sits in the same category as the HTC VIVE and the Oculus Rift – powerful, tethered devices that have to be connected to a powerful computer via a cable.

The PlayStation VR was very comfortable to wear
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One of the key selling points of the PSVR is that if you’ve already got a PS4 console it retails for about half the price of those equivalent headsets. The other – after having tried it on – is that it is by far the most comfortable of those. After playing a broad range of games, demos and experiences on the headset, I never felt discomfort from actually wearing it, and it was very easy to adjust accurately to fit around my head. I was also extremely impressed by the high resolution of the display.

We're still a long way from being able to comfortably play long, intensive games in VR
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But although I felt no discomfort from physically wearing the headset, the intensity of the experience made it very difficult to play games – specially fast-paced ones – for any length of time.

Being a snooker fan, my husband insisted I tried on Hustle Kings, and I have to say that – even though it’s absolutely not my bag – I was rather surprised by how much I enjoyed just hanging out in that hall, listening to the naff music that somehow always manages to get itself stuck in my head. It goes to show that in VR, it is often the ordinary experiences that turn out to be the most pleasurable and addictive.

Snooker is a surprisingly addictive experience in VR, as it turns out
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I’m a huge fan of Resident Evil, and was very much looking forward to playing Resident Evil 7 Biohazard in VR, but I couldn’t last more than 10-15 minutes at a time before having to take quite long breaks to settle my queasy stomach. Now, I should caveat that I am very sensitive to simulator sickness, so it is entirely possible that other people might last much longer, but from what I heard, we’re still a long way off from being able to play long games such as RE7 entirely in VR.

OMG OMG OMG I just got my PlayStation #VR on loan and Resident Evil 7 is arriving on Amazon Prime tomorrow. Not soon enough goddammit!!!! pic.twitter.com/FWzjFvqlDM

— Alice Bonasio (@alicebonasio) January 25, 2017

The biggest thrill is to step into your favourite game, just stop and stare
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Yet the biggest thrill is still to step into your favourite game, and just stop and stare. And it’s exactly in these open world, sandbox-type experiences – such as you get in games like The Last of Us – that VR in its current form becomes most enjoyable. Eventually, as features such as frame rate, graphics processing and resolution continue to improve, the discomfort I felt is also likely to become less of an issue. It is important to remember, after all, that all of these devices are first-generation headsets. But judging by what I’ve seen so far, we’ve got a long and bright road ahead.

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Taking the PlayStation VR for a Spin appeared first on Tech Trends.

I remember it as if it was yesterday, even though it was (holy mother of all yikes!) 20 years ago…

The first time I played Resident Evil changed the way I thought about videogames forever. Sure, I’d had fun with them before, but this was something else entirely. I struggled with the unnatural controls as that first zombie staggered through the dimly lit corridor towards me, and the panic I felt was like the paralysis of a nightmare. That, in other words, was some good s**t right there.

Resident Evil changed the way I thought about Videogames. Could it do the same for VR?
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These days I’m still a sucker for survival horror, although I sadly lack the leisure my teenage self had to indulge in it properly. So many zombies, so little time… Still, when I watch The Walking Dead I know I’d be great in the Zombiepocalypse. I had plenty of practice blowing the heads off the undead hordes.

Looking back at it now, we’ve sure come a long way (See below for a couple of then-and-now shots). Gone is the hilariously bad scripting (fans will fondly remember Barry’s classic line: “Here, Jill, take this lock pick…”) but the truth is that as crude as the graphics might seem now, they truly were nothing short of revolutionary, as was the theme and the gameplay.

There are, however, some serious obstacles to making that work. It is unlikely that we will be able to play a whole game like this in VR any time soon, it’s simply too intense and disorientating, and even veterans have reported feeling sick when demoing it.

There are still issues to iron out if we are to play such long intense games as RE on VR
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Which is why it makes sense for there to be such hype around the fact that Resident Evil 7 – due for release in January – will be one of the flagship titles of the PlayStation VR. If any title could leverage the immersion and presence of VR to make us pee our pants in terror, it should be RE.

Sony really needs to get around to sending me a PlayStation VR headset #HINT
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There are, however, some serious obstacles to making that work. It is unlikely that we will be able to play a whole game like this in VR any time soon, it’s simply too intense and disorientating, and even veterans have reported feeling sick when demoing it.

It is unlikely that we will be able to play a whole game like this in VR any time soon, it’s simply too intense and disorientating, and even veterans have reported feeling sick when demoing it
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Being very susceptible to the curse of VR nausea myself, I’m curious to see how I bear up – #HINT: Sony really needs to send me that headset to try as they promised, theirs is the only major gear I’m yet to try out! – but the videos and screenshots so far really have got me excited. The mixture of the familiar and the cutting edge seem to be there, and if they get it right, Capcom could well revolutionize gaming (and horror) all over again for a new generation of bloodthirsty teenagers. And about time too.

For companies looking to get into VR/AR/MR our Virtual Reality Consultancy services offer guidance on how these technologies can enhance and support your brand strategy.

Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Resident Evil Takes Horror to Virtual Reality appeared first on Tech Trends.