The Oculus Rift continues to grow in popularity. Ever since the virtual reality tech was acquired by Facebook for $2 billion earlier in the year, it’s been picking up steam in development and usage. While the second version of the development kits make their way to eager developers this week, Oculus really put on a show. Several Hollywood companies used the Oculus Rift to create realistic experiences for attendees at the San Diego Comic-Con International event, where over 130,000 fans attended.
First up, Legendary Pictures, who had quite a showing on the floor between the forthcoming Warcraft film from Duncan Jones and Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak, had an exclusive VR set-up with a demo built using Unreal Engine 4 technology. The demo on display recreated a fight from last year’s film Pacific Rim, where players could hop into the robotic Jaeger suit and do battle with the devastating Kaiju from a first-person perspective. After “linking” with your co-pilot, you do battle with a series of monsters, before they’re ripped out of the cockpit in front of your very eyes. Despite being a short demo, it was incredibly impressive.
“We said, ‘Let’s make something cool for Comic-Con,'” said Ethan Stearns, production resources director at Legendary. “We’ve wanted to do something with the Rift since we saw it at CES… so we worked with Oculus to get it done.”
