I’ve got two Oculus Rift demos to share with you today; both funny in their own regard. First is City Quest, a 2D point-and-click adventure which may embody the most pointless use of virtual reality yet. Then there’s TATS, better known as Totally Accurate Toilet Simulator, which could benefit from a scent simulator — for immersion, if not pleasure.
City Quest on the Oculus Rift
City Quest is a 2D point-and-click adventure game which recently finished a successful Kickstarter. The developers apparently ordered an Oculus Rift dev kit and were quite excited to make use of it. But how to adapt it to a 2D game? Why not make a virtual room where you sit in front of a virtual computer and play the game? Useless? Yes. Awesome? Also yes.
For those of you with a Rift, you can download the City Quest Oculus Rift demo here (see links on the right for PC and Mac versions).
“No, seriously. We’re going to support the Rift. Stop laughing, I’m not joking you guys. I (Ryan) ordered a Rift in the Kickstarter back in August, and I’ve been crazy excited to play with it. I didn’t think there was a good way to support the Rift in City Quest until Jon said simply: “Why don’t we just make a virtual computer in a 3D basement?” (or something to that effect), and we fell in love with the stupid, ridiculous idea of using cutting edge technology to simulate low technology,” read an update on the City Quest Kickstarter.
The text on the computer screen can be hard to read, but the virtual room around you turns out to be quite immersive. Behind you is a set of stairs that just feel like they could be walked up. There’s something about the posters on the wall and the Star Wars bed cover that makes the place feel real.
When demoing the Rift I almost always start with this demo to give people a first taste of presence in a virtual space, before having them move on to something more complicated like walking around in Tuscany (or more sickening like riding the Rift Coaster).
Totally Accurate Toilet Simulator (aka TATS) on the Oculus Rift
The second demo is TATS, an immature and somehow entertaining game which, according to the developers was “Originally created for the fuckthisjam gamejam in November 2012,” and is “an atmospheric game that totally accurately simulates the experience of sitting on a toilet.” Here’s a demo of this exciting game in action:
You can try out TATS in the Oculus Rift or on a normal computer for yourself, download it here.
Who is brave enough to rig TATS up to something like the Scent Simulator for a fully immersive virtual reality bathrooming experience?