Something that’s become apparent as we’ve overcome nausea and acclimatised to the strange world of VR is what it’s best at: not fast-moving multiplayer shooters, but experiences. Places, not pew-pew.
What place is stranger and more worthy of exploration than the abstract, airlock atmosphere of the common supermarket?
The project has come about at ad agency Figure Digital, at the behest of Tesco themselves. Figure’s thing is harnessing the Rift for companies and brands “looking to create truly mind-expanding experiences”.
“Using the very latest cutting-edge VR tech, such as the ground-breaking Oculus Rift, we are able to design and create fully immersive branded visual worlds to entertain, amaze and inform like never before,” they write.
The shelves are fully stocked, but the aisles are empty. If you like, you can imagine that the world outside has been stripped of humans overnight by flesh-eating flora or a beef scandal.
Those flat tins and bottles could do with normal mapping. But the rich essence of the supermarket experience is right there in your goggles – all without the personal risk and monetary cost of visiting your nearest branch.
Good stuff, eh? Or perhaps you’ll have other priorities once the Oculus Rift dev kit 2 comes along in July?
Thanks, Gizmodo.