The technology is advancing at a very fast pace and nothing in the world is untouched from it and this rage of growing technological encroachment is affecting all the things be it communication, cooking, entertainment or even gaming. Like everything, gaming era has also undergone a lot of drastic change since the first game was developed.
Initially, the games were very simple and generally had a two dimensional view for the user. Playing them was also very simple with little much for gamer to do other than pressing a few buttons. But now with the advances that has been achieved in the gaming world, the games are very complex having a three dimensional game play and user having a lot of things to do and playing them is a task just too hectic and of course entertaining. Graphics have also improved to a lot of extent and a lot of detailing is being done over the game characters to make them look as real as possible. But progress never halts and the latest one that is under development is ‘virtual gaming’. The concept of it is very similar to that shown in the Star Trek.
The work on this venture, ‘Project Holodeck’ is being done from the students of USC School of Cinematic Arts as well as Viterbi School of Engineering. This will be as already said similar to Holodeck from Star Trek and would create a virtual reality play area around the user that would offer gamers an experience of full body immersion in a 360 degree environment. A person who will be facing the play space of VR would be built with off the ledge components as well as integrated peripherals and advanced custom software. All this would be achieved at prices very small compared to that of the industrial VR.
In order to provide a visual feedback with extensive as well as immersive field of view Oculus RIFT head mounted display is being used by the Project Holodeck. Along with this, the team is also working on a custom software in that would allow addition of other peripherals such as Play station, Hydra, to allow gamers full a highly entertaining body immersive gaming experience. Students are also developing their own game Wild Skies which is a VR game and would be released with Holodeck next year.
