Los Angeles--Behind closed doors on the show floor of the world's premier video game show, Facebook-owned Oculus was letting people touch virtual worlds.
Oculus provided a select few with an early peek at how it is trying to tackle the challenge of letting people intuitively interact with faux objects in fantasy realms.
Prototype Oculus Touch Half Moon controllers that can be gripped as easily as clasping a pistol gave in-world hands to people wearing the company's Rift virtual reality head gear.
Words such as "awesome" and "cool" sprang from the lips of those immersed in a sample virtual world where Touch controllers let them play ping pong, detonate fireworks, blast targets with ray guns, and even sock robots.
An Oculus developer appeared in the demo as a shimmering ghostly head and hands. In-world characters could toss things at or to on another, or work together on tasks such as lighting pyrotechnics.
The vision is that, people could be continents apart in the real world but play a game like tether ball together in a virtual setting.
The effect was so real that it was instinctive to stop suddenly for fear of bumping into a virtual table top, or to grab to catch a dropped toy or ping pong ball.
AFP
