For London-based VR/AR studio, Suchworks, skiing is life. For the past year, these snow sport enthusiasts have been hard at work developing “virtual reality skiing technology” with the help of Fatmap—an innovator in 3D mapping technology for the outdoors. Whether you hit the slopes for real or prefer to do so from the comfort of home, Suchworks has a VR experience for you. Steve Such, CEO of Suchworks joined [a]listdaily to share the inspiration, technology and challenges of creating virtual reality ski experiences for two different demographics.
“There are two areas to the Suchworks ski business,” Such explained. “The gaming side has produced Alpine Ski VR which is going to be launched on the Oculus Store and Steam on December 16 and [will be] available for the Rift and HTC Vive. This is predominantly aimed at gamers, as its slalom and freestyle levels have a fun arcade feel to them.” Despite being accessible from home, Such is confident Alpine Ski VR will be a hit with real-life skiers. “It fully taps into the skier market,” he added, noting that there are 100 square kilometers (around 39 square miles) to ski in the game, accessible by helicopter.
Meanwhile, Resort Ski Experiences taps mainly into the ski market, targeting both the expert and the novice. Suchworks has presented its VR experience on the real slopes and at events, with positive results. “Experts loved to take a helicopter to the top of mountains they’d never usually be able to reach and try out new lines,” Such said, “whilst novices love just getting off the green slope and trying runs they wouldn’t potentially have access to for a few years.”
Of course, the ability to virtually ski a slope naturally lends itself to marketing for the real thing. Suchworks has partnered with the Three Valleys and will work toward many more resort partnerships in 2017. “There are some fantastic marketing implications of this program, the most obvious is allowing people to try out resorts and ski runs before they head off to their holiday,” added Such. “We’d like to move into real estate and allow people to have a virtual tour of their chalet before they book. We’re even in talks with ski manufacturers to create a simulator that will allow you to try out the different types of skis in VR before you buy them!”
For Such and his team, watching people try Resort Ski Experiences has been part of the fun. “To be honest, VR is still such a novel experience to have at events, a lot of people will come just to try VR out for VR itself,” Such explained. “It’s wonderful to see people’s reactions to it, we’ve had pro skiers that loved tearing down the slopes, [and] others that just liked flying around in the helicopter admiring the view.”
“Others would throw themselves on the floor to avoid the helicopter blades when it comes in to land and nearly launch themselves through the monitor when going over a cliff. No one really knows what to expect when they go into an experience like this—it’s their curiosity that’s drawn them in. Once out, they all seem to have very definite areas they’d like to return to and it’s always varied.”
While keeping skiers’ heads out of their monitors is a challenge, keeping players comfortable has been tricky.
“The biggest technical challenges we’ve faced were around creating a believable yet fun skiing model in VR that doesn’t leave the user with motion sickness,” said Such. “We’ve spent over a year tweaking and iterating this model, adding in realistic functionality, then taking it out realizing it doesn’t work in VR. Things like spins work without making you feel too dizzy, but as soon as we added in backflips as well, testers were practically ripping their headsets off to stop themselves feeling ill! You can carve down the slopes, but as soon as we added in a realistic skidding mechanism, it would have the same nauseating affect. We’re really happy with where the model is right now, but it’s been a long process trying to get it right!”
Someday, it may be possible to ski a slope, then book a resort trip within the same VR experience. In the meantime, it helps that Suchworks and Fatmap already know and love the industry enough to get the word out. These connections have helped the company gain traction at events, along with a partnership with Faction Skis, whose wares appear in the game. Alpine Ski VR will be available in the Oculus Store and Steam on December 16.
As to whether or not the movies influenced the game’s content, Boyd said that “no matter how hard we try, we can never get any real details about the movies in advance. Lucasfilm is very tight-lipped about it, which is good because we go as a company to check out the movies and it’s fun to just walk in and have the same experience as the fans—with no pre-knowledge and experiencing it for the first time.
