Last week with the support of top motion capture experts; Audiomotion Studios, we launched The Cell VR, a full body motion tracked VR game at WIRED2015. Over 200 people entered The Cell over 3 days and by all accounts it was a resounding success.

You don’t spend 2 months working on something and not learn any lessons, Will McMaster, head of VR provides his insights below…

1. Presence is achieved more easily when you are in control of your body. The feeling of looking down at your legs and having the avatar legs respond exactly is something that makes the experience feel hugely immersive. It was the Ah Ha moment for us.

2. VR is more comfortable when you are in control of your body.

3. Give voice instructions. A good room scale VR experience needs to have another person giving voice instructions, especially given number 4.

4. Managing a room scale VR experience takes precision timing. Because only one person can be in the experience at a given time, we need to make sure we are as efficient as possible in getting people suited up.

5. Aligning a game character rigged with bones to a real person is pretty hard. This is because not everyones body is perfect. Though the motion tracking software solves some of the issues, there are challenges with making sure everyones body looks right in VR, especially if they are either much taller or shorter than average.

6. Physically limiting the user helps. We had users teathered to a cable coming from the ceiling, and while this limited immersion somewhat, it prevented the user from leaving the play space or bumping into the equipment on the outside of the space.

7. Current motion tracking systems have a long way to go before you can have perfect body tracking in VR.

8. People do things you don’t expect in VR, like grab objects with two hands rather than one.

9. Hacking motion tracking hardware to work in VR is hard.

10. VR is more fun when you can move around!

We would love to give people the opportunity to experience their virtual avatar in the future, get in touch if you have an event in mind!