When we were introduced to the Vive, there was only one game/application available on it, "Tiltbrush", Google's 3D drawing/painting VR experience. No "The Lab", no "SteamVR Tutorial", not even the "SteamVR Set-up" program was installed, which caused issues (I'll talk about that later).

Luckily for me, I got the honour of playing it first. So that was extremely exciting.

Now I'm not lying, the concept of drawing/painting in 3D sounds awesome, but its frustrating (in my opinion).

Like... you draw something that looks great in 2D... then you look at it from a different angle and it looks horrible. So basically, I didn't enjoy it much.

 

Everyone else, however, did. Some tried making concept art for their short film project, while some enjoyed scribbling anywhere and everywhere. It was great to see people having fun with it, but I felt the experience itself was disappointing.

 

I did a few drawings in the program, but they weren't great. Apart from miscellaneous scribbling/writing, the only two things I tried drawing included my character Fred's face and a stick-man wearing a Vive.

 

 

Eventually, me and a few other guys on the course managed to convince our tutor to install "The Lab" onto the computer.

"The Lab", for those who don't know, is a series of VR experiments developed by Valve (some were games like "Catapult" and "Longbow", some were dialogue/story-heavy such as "Dota 2 Secret Shop" and "the Aperture Robot Repair", while others were just little concepts to help show what roomscale-Virtual Reality is capable of).

A day later, while everyone was away having lunch, me and a friend of mine went to the room where the Vive was set-up to play it.

 

My friend went first, and while he went about doing shenanigans, I watched a preview of his perspective via the computer screen. I may not have been wearing the VR kit at the time, but I could already tell it looked great!

 

Then it was my turn.

...

...but before I strapped on the goggles, I gave my friend my phone, asking him to record my first moments in The Lab or, more specifically, in the "Aperture Robot Repair", a story driven VR experience originally released as a demo to test if people's computers were able to handle rendering Virtual Reality.

 

Here is the footage, edited down to a shorter, somewhat watchable format. Do yourself a favour and turn on the Subtitles, as its hard to hear most of what I say.

 

As expected, The Lab was awesome, and not just because I was a huge Portal fan.

I know this sounds cheesy, but the game was genuinely immersive. The combination of the high-quality visuals and the immersive nature of the Vive really made the experience believable. If I wasn't able to hear people chat around me, I'd probably get lost in the game.

In my opinion, The Lab had a (literally) huge advantage over Tiltbrush, mainly in terms of scale. In Tiltbrush, there is no way to compare how big or small something is other than from your viewpoint, which varies depending on the player's height.

In the Lab, however, you can see somewhat-common items like a Coffee mug, or Clipboard, and the realisation of how big the world you're in is weighs down on you.

 

(...or maybe it had something to do with the fact Tiltbrush takes place in an empty void... I'm not sure, its just some natural reaction or something.)

Either way, the world of 'The Lab' is breath-taking to look at.

 

The "Aperture Robot Repair" wasn't the only experience I tried (but it was the only one that was recorded).

I also played "Catapult", A.K.A "Angry Brids in 3D, in a giant warehouse with explosive barrels" where you Personality Cores at stacks of crates to cause as much damage as possible (which is harder than it looks) and another game; "Longbow", a game I like to call "Battle of Helm's Deep" simulator, where you are stuck on top of a castle and must kill all invaders with a Bow and infinite supply of arrows, which is also harder than it may seem.

 

 

I've been praising it up until this point, but I have a few issues with the Vive.

 

The first is a big problem that you may or may not be aware of; the bl**dy cable.

Although the Controllers are wireless, the headset via a big long cable to the computer, which makes it extremely easy to get tangled up in. In-fact, in the unedited footage of my playing the Robot Repair experience, there is a point where I had to stop and untangle myself from the bloomin' wires.

Thankfully, HTC addressed this issue after the release of the Vive, stating they planned on making a cableless version, and although I may not be able to try out that version (whenever it comes out) I'm glad to see they're aware of how problematic the cable is and that they are fixing it.

 

The next issue is "half an issue with SteamVR, half an issue with the way the headset was set-up at the course". The problem is that, at no point during gameplay, did the Chaperone bounds appear to stop me going off-track.

For those who don't know, the "Chaperone bounds" are a big glowing grid that appears during gameplay with the Vive that is used to mark the edges of the play-space, basically to stop the player from bumping into objects/furniture.

 

Why did they not appear? Well, there is an application in Steam called the "SteamVR Set-up", which I think is used to draw out the bounds. It wasn't installed.

This is great, and incredibly dumb.

It's great, because it means you can just plug in the headset, download a few games, and jump right in, but its idiotic how its not installed automatically (same with the Tutorial).

 

And yes, the lack of Chaperone bounds was a huge disaster for me and everyone else. Everytime someone played on the Vive, someone else would have to stand nearby and make sure the person playing didn't walk out of the play area.

 

Apart from those major issues/minor gripes the headset and controllers are... okay to wear, not entirely comfortable, but still aren't discomforting.