LudoScience

Playstation VR review: the body comes back in force!Julian Alvarez | 01-02-2017 | 12:40

This first of January 2017 was the occasion for Ludoscience to test the Playstation VR.

Here's a look back at our observations and experiences with various titles associated with this technology.

First of all, we tested the “Playstation VR Worlds” compilation and in particular the title: “Ocean Descent”, which invites us to visit the ocean depths. Protected by a cage, you descend little by little into the depths, contemplating the aquatic landscapes. Right from the start, you're immersed in this underwater journey, with its schools of multicolored fish, crustaceans and majestic stingrays. Veronique, in her forties, agreed to experience this journey while we filmed her, turning her head in all directions to contemplate the landscape. She explains that she finds the technology incredible, and that visiting the seabed in this way suits her very well.

However, she knows that a shark is about to appear. She is apprehensive and asks for reassurance. In deep water, the landscape darkens. Véronique looks around for the shark. Waiting for the moment, she comments: “Some users could have heart attacks with a helmet like that! A small debate ensues on the potential of VR to help people overcome phobias. But the exchange is short-lived, as the immersive experience takes over again. The depths become so deep that darkness reigns supreme. Luminous jellyfish emerge from the depths.

Véronique contemplates the beauty of these virtual creatures. She thinks back to the shark. She apprehends and scans her surroundings, turning over on her sofa.

All along the descent, team-mates explain the situation by radio. The atmosphere is relaxed at first, but as the descent progresses, the talk becomes more anxious. This adds to the dramatic tension and helps to prepare for the arrival of the great white shark. Eventually, it emerges from the depths. The soulless-eyed sea beast pounces on the cage, ripping off various components. Véronique alternates between nervous laughter and pleas for help: “What can I do? Don't I have a joystick? What should I do?...”. Véronique does not lose sight of the animal and continues to turn around on her sofa. The predator rips off a whole section of the cage. This exposes the player to being eaten. The shark rushes back into the cage.

Véronique's survival instinct is to fold her legs over the sofa.

She remains in this position until the end of the game, which, without revealing the fall, has a happy ending.

This experience highlights the importance of the body and its involvement in the game. This position, in which the legs have been bent to “protect” themselves from the shark, demonstrates the extent to which the body is called upon during the virtual reality experience. So, far from cutting us off from the real world, the virtual reality experience seems to give the body even more importance than with a classic video game experience involving the screen with a joystick or the keyboard and mouse.

So what does using a joystick with Virtual Reality actually do?

To test this interactive experience, we're off to London with the game “The London Heist”. We play a gangster who has to steal a diamond on behalf of a mafioso. The avatar here is a gloved hand. The body is not represented. But that's not a problem. You soon get used to it. The glove becomes a mouse pointer that can interact with the environment before us. The first significant interaction takes place in the game's second chapter. We are invited into a brasserie where we can virtually “smoke” a cigar. Lighting the cigar with a lighter proved complicated: holding the cigar and lighter with a single controller, i.e. a single hand, is not easy. You need two Playstations Moves to have two hands. So we have to find a way around this by first blocking the cigar at mouth level and then lighting it. Repeatedly, we drop the cigar or lighter. As the object slides across the floor, it eventually materializes again on the table in front of us. This allows us to restart our operation. During this interactive experience, the mafioso explains the situation, making the stage his own. Concentrating on the idea of lighting our cigar, we don't pay too much attention to what he's saying.

However, the atmosphere is enough to immerse us in the world of this thriller. And that, in the end, is the most important thing. We're in the second degree. We're playing at being gangsters. The game provides a prosthesis for our imagination. We escape to study the smallest nooks and crannies of the setting, like the stained-glass windows, for example. Then, once we've mastered the cigar, we're off in search of new haptic experiences. For example, while seated on a bench, just like our avatar, we had the idea of touching its texture. What a surprise when our real hands caress the upholstery of our own sofa. A curious link is established between the diegesis of this 3D virtual world and the real world. Once again, it's via the body that this strange alchemy takes place.

The mobster ends up handing us money, a cell phone and an earpiece. These objects invite us to play. We try to throw them away. They return to the table. We try to put the headset to our ears. This fails most of the time. It returns to the table. The phone rings. A text message arrives. We read it with the strange feeling of making an everyday gesture. When the sequence is over, we enjoy the experience, but don't really remember anything the mobster says. That's all right. We assume that the game will take care of giving us the elements we need to get back on track. And that's exactly what happens.

In chapters 4 and 6, we find ourselves having to demonstrate our dexterity by shooting enemies. First statically, taking cover behind a counter, then dynamically in a vehicle.

In the static phase, the game invites us to use our bodies to dodge enemy fire. We crouch down, lower our heads and take cover behind a counter. There are gaps where we can fire at our opponents. It's an exhilarating experience. We're clearly taking a new step forward in the videogame experience, freeing ourselves from the specific command modes that allow most FPSs to shield an avatar from bullets. Here, the experience of the body allows us to rediscover more natural and intuitive sensations. Similarly, to target opponents, you simply point the joystick at your targets. Immersion is total during this phase of the game.

For the dynamic phase, we drive on a deserted highway. In a pickup truck, we are chased by motorcycles and 4x4 vehicles firing at us. Armed with a machine pistol, we try to stop our enemies. We can shoot from all sides, including leaning out of the window to neutralize the vehicles behind us. While the overall experience is enjoyable, this is the first time we feel dizzy. This occurs particularly when we turn our head rapidly from one side to the other. After a few seconds, as we refocus on the middle of the stage, the undesirable effects fade away. When these dizzy spells occur, 15-year-old Clément notes that we are torn between two feelings: wanting to continue playing and wanting to stop the dizziness. So, for a few moments, we're in an in-between state, thinking about ourselves, our current state and the real world, while still being in the game, the second degree and the challenge. This vertigo can therefore be perceived as an additional test that must be overcome in order to win. It's a kind of test that our bodies impose on us and that invites us into the game.

In other titles, the vertigo becomes too nauseating and the only way out is to remove the helmet. This is particularly true of “Scavengers Odyssey”. In this game, we embody an alien in command of an exo-tank whose objective is to destroy the nests of another alien race invading the area.

Initially, the game lets you jump from asteroid to asteroid horizontally, but the plot thickens when you have to switch from horizontal to vertical to walk on walls or enter the various sub-sections of a spaceship wreck. These tilts, without the body feeling the slightest change in the inner ear, cause nausea and force us to stop the game. This nausea lasts for several minutes after the end of the game. It's a very unpleasant experience, and one that no one wants to repeat. A pity, since the scenario was more developed than in previous games, and several levels were offered.

Slightly burned by this 3rd title, we decided to change universe and DVD-Rom, and set off for the ghost train offered by “Until Dawn Rush of Blood”. Here, the player is offered a rail-shooter-style FPS: he or she moves automatically along a predefined path and must shoot at various elements that appear in the scenery: monsters, targets, pigs...

The game's production is meticulous and the horrific atmosphere well crafted.

But what's most striking about this title is the way it takes the body into account: from the very first moments of the game, players are asked to avoid wooden obstacles by bending down at the right moment, or by leaning to the left or right to pass through adapted cut-outs. Quentin, 17, who is testing the game, found that by synchronizing his body movement with the movement of the carriage on the rails, he did not feel dizzy. Added to this is the reasonable speed of movement, which prevents nausea. Finally, enemy waves often appear when the carriage is almost at a standstill. In this way, the rapid left-to-right movements that generated dizzy sensations in the van chase chapter of “The London Heist” are also avoided.

The game's game designers seem to have managed everything that could have triggered motion sickness in the player, leaving room for a feeling of... dread.

To conclude this series of tests, we're off on a space mission in the Star Wars universe with “Star Wars Rogue One: X-Wing VR Mission”. This is free DLC for the “Star Wars Battlefront” game. In this mission, players take on the role of a pilot who must destroy asteroids, escort an allied ship, attack TIE fighters and neutralize a Galactic Empire interstellar cruiser.

What's most striking in the first moments of the mission is the presence of the pilot's body in the cockpit of the X-Wing. This gives the player the impression of truly embodying his avatar. By lowering the head, it is possible to see the legs, arms and chest, with the feeling that he is breathing. As you turn the ship, the avatar's body tilts the control stick. The embodiment of this avatar in the midst of a realistic cockpit is striking. Various buttons can be pressed here and there, further immersing us in the game's universe and the make-believe we felt in “The London Heist” brewery. The 360° exploration of locations, the landscapes of space, the galaxy, the fleet of Rebel ships and the details of the X-Wing all contribute to the immersive effect, sometimes giving the impression of being very small in the immensity of the universe on offer. This effect is accentuated by the ability to move freely around the fleet's various aircraft. The size of some of the larger ships and planets accentuates the impression of smallness, and of piloting a frail craft in the face of hostile surroundings.

You have to play with the camera, moving it off-center to place it behind your avatar, to realize that it has no head. We then realize that this avatar has been designed to perfectly accommodate our visual field. This brings us back to the real world and our own bodies. But this subterfuge is quickly forgotten, as the game's storyline quickly plunges us back into the diegesis.

What about motion sickness? At times, motion sickness is felt when navigating through the asteroids, or during combat with the TIE fighters. More precisely, when you're looping and making tight turns. If the first play-through brings back bad memories of the title “Scavengers Odyssey”, we try to overcome this by clinging to the universe of the franchise and the fact that we're living a childhood dream: to finally find ourselves at the controls of an X-Wing in a Star Wars setting. And we're finding that, from game to game, we're beginning to tame the vertigo: firstly, by adopting strategies that consist of refocusing our point of view in the middle of the image when we feel dizzy. Secondly, by avoiding certain rapid movements of the head from left to right or up and down. Finally, we integrate the idea that tilting from horizontal to vertical is linked only to the virtual environment and not to the real one. It's as if the brain were beginning to integrate the fact that, in this particular case, it was normal for the inner ear not to pass on information relating to a change in body position... So it would seem that, just as we can get used to seasickness or airsickness, we can adapt to virtual reality sickness. But this takes time and the right strategies. It's also possible to imagine devices that subject the body to movements to make it feel the expected effects. However, this quest may be veiled in the context of domestic use, as it will require bulky and costly devices. At the same time, the video game industry, and by extension the Serious Game industry, will have to experiment with other avenues, in particular those linked to level design, in order to acquire suitable recipes. But let's not lose sight of the fact that the first virtual reality experiences date back to the 60s. A great deal of scientific literature has been written on the subject of motion sickness. It's time to rediscover them and pursue the paths opened up by our elders.

In the meantime, we can take stock of a series of developments we've been experiencing since 2006: the Wii has made us aware of the importance of mobilizing the body to play, the Kinect has enriched the experience by freeing us from the controller to play with our body, and now virtual reality headsets are making us aware of the importance of the body in bridging the gap between the virtual environment and the real world. These steps are undoubtedly just the beginning, and there are undoubtedly more to come to enhance the experience. But it now seems certain that taking the body into account has become a central issue for our future videogame experiences.