Sightline: The Chair is a virtual reality demo designed as a sort of showcase for the technology and one we’re a big fan of. Now, developer Tomáš ‘Frooxius’ Mariančík of has released the latest iteration and it’s packed with technical and creative updates you’ll want to see.
There aren’t too many virtual reality demo’s that get an unequivocal recommendation from those of us at Road to VR, but Sightline: The Chair is an absolute exception.
Based on the developer’s entry to the 2013 Oculus and Indiecade VR Jam Competition (coming 3rd), which explored the gameplay possibilities afforded by gaze based techniques, something virtual reality facilitates very well. In the world of Sightline, the rules of the real world are twisted and toyed with to unnerve, excite, delight and terrify the player. Look away from a tree at a building behind you, turn back and it’s a car, for example.
Whilst that probably sounds like a parlour trick which would become tiresome after a short time, in Sightline: The Chair, Mariančík is constantly throwing new ideas into the mix with a surprise for the viewer just a few glances away from the last. Sightline: The Chair is also beautiful, claustrophobic, nerve racking and terrifying – all within the space of a 5 minute demo, eliciting a sort of ‘greatest hits’ representing the best that virtual reality has to offer now.
The latest version of The Chair. v1.8, is now out and takes advantage of the latest Oculus SDK and Runtime advances whilst also overhauling visual aspects of the demo via a move to Unity 5. There are also a couple of other enhancements and easter eggs too, but we’ll not spoilt the surprise. Here’s a run-down of what to expect from the latest release.
The new version also adds Leap Motion support. For those of you with a Leap Motion peripheral mounted to your Oculus Rift DK2, you can now see your hands inside the virtual world and interact with certain items.
Changelog
[Chair 1.8] HUGE UPDATE! * Update to SDK 0.7
- Whole project updated to Unity 5
- Updated many materials to PBR, changed some materials for PBR variants
- Improved detail on some models (subsurf + some remodelling + texture update)
- Desktop scene stuff (Cups, bowling pin, donuts)
- Remodeled keyboard keys slightly
- Added inverse kinematics for head position, the body now moves with you (more or less, it’s wonky sometimes)
- Added support for Leap Motion, you can now see your hands and interact with a few items! LEAP MOTION MUST BE MOUNTED ON THE HEADSET The integration isn’t very well polished (takes a lot of time), if you don’t want to use it, just unplug it (or disable service)
- Added new stuff to the space scene (won’t tell you, what, it’s a surprise)
- Improved waving grass shader, now it looks more like it actually waves, and not like it just moves back and forth.
- Added higher resolution texture for the Earth, courtesy of NASA, 8192×4096 (also updated the Earth shader)
- Fixed issue where a lot of unecessary material instaces were made, which prevented draw-call batching. Should improve performance significantly.
- Updated 3DCeption to the latest version (1.1.2)
- Fixed a bug which should hopefully prevent rare situation, where the game gets stuck when transitioning to the city scene from the forest
