Students at the Saxion University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands will today showcase the type of VR gaming that many of us one day want to experience for ourselves.
Over the past five months students at the University have been working on Project Myron, a full-body tracked multiplayer VR shooter, as part of their course. The project is set to be shown to the world today via a live stream event kicking off at 1pm CET. You can watch it here.
Project Myron achieves full body tracking in VR through a combination of technologies. The first is the Xsens MVN suit, a wet suit-like device that tracks everything from legs to arms to torso. Users also wear a pair of Manus VR gloves for hand tracking, imitating holding their gun and pulling the trigger to fire. They’re then fitted with XMG backpack PCs hooked up to Oculus Rifts that allow them to freely roam around an open area.
The experience itself was built with the help of The Virtual Dutch Men. Two teams of two players have to fight for control of a central point in the map, a little like a Domination mode in a Call of Duty game or something similar. Making something like this obviously wasn’t easy. The students told me that getting everything working together fluently was a challenge.
“I think they’ve done a fantastic job,” the university’s Matthijs van Veen said of the students over Skype.
Project Myron will be completed in July. Sadly you probably won’t ever get to play it for yourself, though the students say it would need more work if it was to become a full product. Fortunately some of them plan to continue working in VR after its completion.
