The Void is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. Their beautifully produced video says it all. Seriously check it out above.
The company claims to have “significant sums being invested in the technology behind the experience,” which is important given the scope and expense of the venture. According to their website, they are planning to open these “Virtual Entertainment Centers” (VECs) in major cities throughout North and South America, Asia, Europe and Australia. If these VECs are anything like the video, I think my mind might actually explode.
All of this is powered by The Void’s own hardware and software. Because this is meant as an installation, rather than a consumer in home product, the team has been able to free themselves from hardware restrictions, enabling them to create some pretty amazing things that wouldn’t be viable at a consumer level yet. In The Void they are taking a real world environment and placing a digital world on top of it to create an experience that is both interactive and most importantly, social.
Powering the experience will be The Void’s own proprietary HMD, which they are calling ‘The Rapture.’ Freed from the restrictions of consumer pricing, the company is touting some pretty impressive tech specs for the headset, which were uncovered by our friends over at Road to VR:
- Dual High-Density Curved OLED Displays (1080p per-eye, initially)
- Quantum Dots (nearly doubling perceived resolution color range)
- Custom Optics (proprietary lens-in-lens design)
- High-Quality THX Headphones (featuring in-game binaural sound design)
- Super-Gain Inline Microphones (for in-game communications)
- Proprietary Global Head Tracking Sensors (running at 120Hz)
These specs add up to a pretty impressive headset, one that sounds like it will be at the very least on par with the consumer level headsets coming late this year and early next.
The experience really reminds me of Q-Zar – one of the orignal laser tag locations, where I spent many fun birthdays. The reason Q-Zar, one of the original laser tag locations, was so fun was because I got to run around shooting my friends. We would team up, get in our stations and proceed to win every time. One of the reasons Q-Zar flopped is because it was the same experience every time you stepped into the laser tag world, there wasn’t an incentive to keep coming back. In fact the only incentive was to bring new friends, but since I always won, nobody wanted to play with me anymore… wishful thinking.
That’s why the concept of The Void is so appealing. It’s dynamic. I can enter a new experience each time I walk through the door.
To learn more about their hardware and plans for the future, you can checkout their website.
