Echo VR : Become a Cyborg Today

I found myself as a cyberkinetic being. My first reaction when playing the simulation was that I was strapped by metal braces to keep myself in place but marveled of how my limbs became robotic appendages, wired and soldered together in cybernetic material, realizing that I have become a robot. With little arrows hovering over the 3D assets such as levers, barracks, and other items to grab onto( when you're not just a robot but a robot flying around in zero-gravity), the haptic feedback on my controllers when I held onto to items melded the immersive experience even further.

Thankfully, I didn't experienced any motion sickness as I was the one navigating the stable environment, not the environment moving when I'm stuck in static position, providing the liberty to interact with the environment however I wanted to. Whether I was looking below spaces, traveling within large tubes, or playing frisbee in an arena with other androids, I had the freedom to have fun my own way. Sometimes I was startled by interacting with others in the virtual space, given that I'm generally rather shy, but rathered alarmed of how my Facebook nickname was visible to everyone in the zero-gravity rooms with other androids floating about. Interestingly, I found myself completely immersed in the tasks in hand and navigating throughout the space using the Oculus Touch controllers, uniquely calibrating the buttons and observing the various scenes oh so quickly. To one of my suprises, I wasn't aware of how Echo VR was a multi-player VR game when I stepped in, finding myself yet again addressed by another player in the cyberspace probably hundreds of miles away in reality.

One of my initial frustrations was using the controls, given that Echo VR is still in development, in that the reaction time of my commands was still processing in the 90 frames per second or greater in the VR space. Using the Oculus Rift gamepad as the means to navigate, I can play frisbee with other androids. In the frisbee arena, I played my first ever virtual reality multiplayer game, where you're floating through the arena using mini-jetpacks and tossing a frisbee to the large goal mainframes to earn points for yourself or your respective team.

This frontier of virtual reality paves a new path for a new e-sports to rise. Using the 3D space to explore, anchors ( the diagonal floating cubes) to keep yourself stable, and rocket boosters to experience speed in split-second time makes worth of a fast-paced gameplay in an experimental enviroment. Interacting with the other players to retrieve the frisbee to win points uses teamwork in a way that you are physically moving your body in reality and reacting to the sounds distributed through the virtual space. The level of immersion given in this kind of game was so splendid, I couldn't help but be part of the heat of the moment while I was floating in space or travelling through tunnels to complete my objectives.

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