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Myst Island is being recast in 3D for the Oculus Rift

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This is actually the second time Myst has been 3Dified. In the primitive ‘90s, we used to think 3D was a property of game levels, while our screens remained resolutely flat. I know! There’s a group of ancient developers called id Software who must be feeling pretty foolish about that right now. But that’s the way with knowledge. Who knows what wonders science might reveal in the next decade?

I digress. A VR modder has integrated the famous Myst Island into Unreal Engine 3 and begun readying it for VR wanderings.

“As soon as I heard about the Oculus Rift, this game franchise came to my mind,” writes IGameArt. “How amazing would it be if I could actually ‘link’ to the ages of Myst, exploring them and feeling the way I imagine the stranger who came across those mystical books must have felt the moment he touched the linking page and was sucked into a new world?”

Indeed. Though the actual world-sucking might require some sort of homebrew hoover peripheral, IGameArt seems to have had some success in porting the island as it exists in Myst 5 over to a new engine. But he’s not quite happy with it just yet.

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“That is Myst Island, granted, it doesn’t look quite right,” he says. “It’s considerably more run down. The major elements are all there, the terrain, the architecture, but the flora is decrepid.

“The goal of this project is to give that Island a facelift, and on top of that, to bring it to the next generation in terms of visual fidelity. I want you to be able to walk around Myst as it was when Sirrus and Achenar were children. Blue skies, birds chirping, buildings clean and new, fish swimming on the shore near the dock.”

Myst is always a divisive one. Are you dying to wander the island as it was when Sirrus and Achenar were children? Or would you rather knock their heads together and catch the next boat outta there?