VR is for real

In what was my first encounter with HTC Vive, there were several experiences which blew my away. In particular, the one which involved mounting a bow on the arrow really arrested my senses. I remember actually feeling the tension on the string as I arched the bow backwards. The continuous click sound and haptic feedback from the controller definitely helped. Finally, releasing the arrow also felt really close to the real thing i.e the trajectory that my arrow followed closely mirrored what it would have in the real world.

I would improve this experience by making it easier to find the spot on the bow where the bow is mounted. Currently, it seemed like there was a learning curve involved in this process. I would also add the ability to mount objects lying around you and have the user fire them as an alternative projectile. I’m guessing it’ll be fun to observe how the target would be affected when hit by different objects, for example, a stick vs a can.

The part I liked least involved reaching the castle where all the action was taking place. Doing this was particularly intuitive since it required to me interact with the interface in a different way than I interacted with the rest of it. Due to the interaction being a little incoherent, the flow broke my natural train of thought. I would change this by adding visual cues indicating how might the interaction is expected to play out, so the user isn’t left guessing.

Leave a Reply