Google’s cracked it, or at least they claim they have. Later this year the company will be releasing standalone VR headsets in partnership with companies like HTC and Lenovo. These devices are completely independent, running with built-in hardware and not phones or PCs. But the most promising new feature has to be WorldSense tracking.
WorldSense offers inside-out 6 degrees of freedom (6DOF) positiontal tracking. That makes these headsets some of the first mobile devices to truly move your head inside a virtual world instead of just turning your head in different directions. It’s a little like when the Oculus Rift’s first development kit graduated to the DK2.
These headsets will be running on Google’s Daydream platform, which already has a head-start with content releasing on compatible smartphones. We’ve picked a handful of existing games that we’re aching to get at once more with the new positional tracking.
Eclipse: Edge of Light
It makes sense that we’d want Eclipse in the mix as we pretty confidently called it Daydream’s best game when it released earlier this year. This first-person adventure is one of VR’s better exploration games, and we often found ourselves aching to lean deeper into that world, especially with the awesome head-scanning mechanic that reminds us of Metroid Prime.
Virtual Virtual Reality
This amazing experience is one of the most essential and downright weird games you’ll find in VR right now, taking you to world after world and showing you amazing new sights. It’s a universe you want to feel completely lost in, and the lack of positional tracking currently holds it back from completely engulfing you. WorldSense can change that.
Lola and the Giant/Along Together
Picking between these two games, which share practically identical concepts in which young adventurers are guided by large, fantastical creatures, is too hard. So we put them both together. Each of these spritely worlds is begging to be leaned down into so that we can get a closer look at the action.
Twilight Pioneers
This remains one of Daydream’s most surprisingly excellent games. Twilight Pioneers boasts combat so fine-tuned that you might find yourself lurching your head around in unison with it. That can be a pretty strange feeling, so we’d even recommend you wait to try it on these new devices.
Danger Goat
Danger Goat is far from our favorite Daydream game, but one of our big complaints when we reviewed it was that we couldn’t get closer to the colorful world below us. Danger Goat’s diorama-like levels could really benefit from letting players peak around the sides to find hidden traps.
