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We should be learning to type in the Oculus Rift

We should be learning to type in the Oculus Rift

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Technically speaking, many of the first games I played were probably typing trainers. Typing to race a car, typing to snap up bugs — there was nothing that words couldn't fix, fuel, or fight. After Mavis Beacon, there was Typing of the Dead, which paired the thrill of zombie killing with the virtuous excuse of learning secretarial skills. Typing games combine the twitch reflexes of shooters with the careful pacing you need to get words right, while tapping into abilities that many people hone all the time. All of this is to say that "Tron, but with typing" is an excellent premise for a game. Sitting at your desk in front of a late 20th century PC, enter a world of blue cubes and neon lights where you'll have to endlessly blow up words before they can hit you. Then they hit you. The end. Restart.

As you can guess, there's not a lot to VR Typing Trainer, though different modes are supposed to be forthcoming. And at first glance, it seems to run afoul of one of the most fundamental rules of VR: keyboards are terrible. They're big, unwieldy, and difficult to find when you're effectively blindfolded. But VR Typing Trainer is a rare example of a game that could only work on a keyboard and could only work in VR. The controls don't require you to take your fingers off the letter keys, so you won't lose your place as easily. You aim at specific words by looking at them, instead of having to cycle through them with your keyboard. And there is no better way to stop a novice typist from peeking at keys than to transport them into cyberspace. Want to convince your school to buy an Oculus Rift? Does your school have money to burn? Here's your chance.