The Beautiful VR Game

I was happy to be able to put my Gear VR back in action; I haven’t used it much since doing some testing and prototyping for projects at Sovilon Studios. I’ve watched soccer games in VR a couple years back, but the experience is now much more appealing and indeed special. So what’s it like?

Active Viewing

Watching soccer on a television is usually a passive experience. The camera operators coordinate everything so that the ball is always in field of view, and the zooms and angles do all the perspective work for the viewer.

When watching in VR, your able to change the perspective that you watch from. The main view is the wide-angle full field view.

Its kind of hard to see the ball and I have to really focus to follow the action. You’ll want to move your head side to side as the possession of the ball changes. The resolution of the screen isn’t that great, which is one of the negative points about the experience. But I guess its kind of like watching it in real life. You can see the crowd in front of you, including reactions and supporters.

Behind the Goal

From the main view, your able to look to the right and the left and see a button to change camera perspectives. Selecting these will take you to a behind-the-goal perspective. This is where the VR experience shines. Corner kicks, action in the box (headers, fouls), penalties and near misses are completely different from this perspective. Corner kicks and crosses into the box are literal head-turners: if your not ready you will miss the action. Near misses will make you shout as your able to clearly see the distance between the shot and the bar.

The experience of this angle is kind of like how the goalie would see the game. I’ve gotten used to watching the game on TV, so it took some time to get used to watching the game like this. But then I realized this is how its like to defend against Messi’s Argentina (I was watching behind the Iceland goal). That was pretty cool. I preferred to stay in this perspective, as I imagined this end was where the best action would be anyways.

Room for Improvement

Switching camera perspectives incurs about a 3 second lag. Given the fast pace of the game, I wanted to be able to switch perspectives from one end of the pitch to the other. But the 3 second lag made me hate switching and want to just stay where I was. The other annoying thing was that the resolution of the screen in VR wasn’t the same as you’ll get in an HD television. So I found myself sometimes squinting and struggling to find the ball against the glare of the sun.

Next Generation Technology Experiences

This was but a taste of how virtual reality can totally change your experience. The sense of presence and interactivity is great for enhancing sales presentations, and is being used in the fields of real estate, education and many more. If you’re interesting in discussing a VR experience for your business, you can get in touch by dialing 1–844-CODE-ME-1.