It’s a well-known issue that communicating what it feels like to see and play a game in VR using a traditional, flat, 2D screen is nearly impossible. Utilizing mixed reality helps — it lets people see the player inside the game world and provides a better representation of what it’s like — but nothing beats actually experiencing it inside an HMD itself. Luckily, that’s where 360-video helps bridge the gap.
Whether or not you think 360 video is VR or not, it’s undeniably more immersive than a flat video. That’s why Vertigo Games, the developer behind the zombie-killing fest Arizona Sunshine, opted to release a 360 ‘Apocalypse’ trailer for the upcoming action game. You can watch that embedded below.
We’ve seen 360 trailers for VR games before, but not nearly enough of them. Ideally, we think they should be the new standard for demonstrating a VR game. HTC, Valve, and Oculus should allow developers to display 360 trailers directly in the storefronts on Viveport, Steam, Oculus Home, respectively. Let players view them inside their Vive, Rift, or Gear VR without going to another app or downloading something. That small step would lend tremendous help towards communicating what it’s like to play certain VR games.
This particular trailer is just a slo-mo look at a scene where zombies are attacking a road full of vehicles — it’s nothing groundbreaking — but it’s several magnitudes more intense than just a normal game trailer when watched inside a VR headset.
When we played Arizona Sunshine last, we came away very impressed. While it’s just a zombie wave shooter at its core, you’re able to move around the environment using different hotspot waypoints and there is full cooperative multiplayer and singleplayer game modes.
The game is scheduled for a release this year in 2016, leaving just about two months before that window closes. When it does come out, it’s currently slated for the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR.
