Ghostbusters Dimension VR - Wowza

Over the weekend my wife and I were in NYC for a movie premier (Don't Think Twice - well done, go see it) and a show (Beautiful - if you want to go to a Carol King concert, you'll love it). Sunday morning I dragged her to the new Ghostbusters Dimension VR experience, which opened a few weeks ago.

It was pretty freaking incredible.

I've had an Oculus Rift for a while, both the DK2 and CV1, so I'm reasonably experienced with VR, and games in VR. This was definitely a step beyond, and I'm really excited about where the tech might be going.

For this 'experience', up to 4 people go through at once. You don a 'Proton Pack' with an attached VR helmet, and a gun. The Proton Pack is a computer plus batteries, and the helmet is the VR goggle setup, plus integrated headphones and mic. It was heavier than I expected, but we got used to it after a while.

You then just walk through the experience, shooting at ghosts, and hearing instructions from your computerized 'controller' giving you instructions and weaving some story into it.

The amazing part is this - you are actually walking through areas with real walls and doors and furniture, and the computers keep track of your physical location and map things onto those objects. So the walls look like fully decorated walls, with wall paper, bookcases, etc. In normal VR, if you get close to a wall you get clipping or weird control artifacts. Here you actually bump into a wall. Similarly, in one room there was a chair in the middle. I didn't even realize it was there until I walked into it, and then I looked down and saw a computer-generated cartoony chair.

In addition the other players are also rendered into your environment. They look like standard 3D video game characters, wearing helmets. When someone got slimed, you saw the slime spared over their uniform. And again, if (when) you bumped into them you actually saw that you bumped into them. It was a little hard to keep track of who was who, but my wife was the shortest one, which helped. Since it keeps track of 3D helmet position it figures out how tall everyone is for their avatar.

The proton packs also had haptic stuff in them, so if a ghost flew through you, or you got hit with something virtual, you felt it.

The whole adventure takes 10-15 minutes, and has a number of very cool moments. I don't want to spoil anything, but here's something that I think underscores the effectiveness (so skip down if you don't want to see).

*****
At one point a section of wall gives out, and the team needs to climb through a hole in the wall to the outside of the skyscraper you're in. You have to walk across a ledge and then a 'window washer' platform, and then there's a sequence fighting some ghosts charging at the building, climbing up the walls, the platform you're standing on, etc. I am bad with heights, but I have gotten used to dealing with heights in VR experiences (rock climbing, etc). I WAS NOT HAPPY WITH THIS. I nearly freaked out as we had to climb out there - and I was first, because of where we were in the prior room. My brain KNEW that we were just standing on a floor, and that the wind was from a fan (yes, there was wind), but my lizard brain was having none of it. Fortunately there was a railing on either side of the platform (an actual physical railing, mapped into the virtual world as a railing I could see), and I grabbed onto it with one hand while shooting with the other.

I was scared, exhilarated, and really impressed.
****

Negatives - There were a couple of issues. First, the gear was heavy, as I said. There was a 10 yo girl scheduled to go in the group behind us, and I don't think she was going to be able to manage it. Plus it was a little scary for younger kids.

Second, graphics quality wasn't up to the latest VR - I assume because of processing power required, and because of their lead time to create the ride. It was comparable to the DK2 - no where near the CV1. So everything had a cartoonish look.

Third - Player avatar body positions weren't tracked. It knew where your head was, and where your gun was, and tried to figure out where your body and arms were - and sometimes it was comically wrong. Limbs were bent in all kinds of crazy ways.

Finally - Tracking could be a little off. I found that objects were about 6" offset from where they were visually, which was mainly an issue when I tried to grab a railing and had to hunt for it.

Oh yeah - cost also I guess is an issue. It's at Madame Tussaud's (the wax museum) and you can't just go on Ghostbusters. You have to get a ticket for the museum as well. So best package deal was $50 per person. We blitzed through the museum and just headed for Ghostbusters Dimension, but it was certainly a lot to spend $100 for a 30 minute ride, with suiting up, etc. But I chalked it up to 'research'.

So if you're in New York City and have the time and money, I HIGHLY recommend giving this a shot. The possibilities are just endless. This could be hunting for Pokemon, or a detective mystery, or a thousand other possibilities. And once you invest in having the equipment, it wouldn't be so horrendous to reconfigure it every few months by shifting around the blank walls and doors.

ghostbusters.madametussauds.com/

A video (with some minor spoilers:




Geoff