The Verge's New York offices now have an official virtual reality room. With an HTC Vive and an Oculus Rift, we've got access to dozens of games, tools, and experiments, letting us do everything from paint in 3D to try out being an astronaut. There's way too much to write about it all, but we're putting our writers, editors, artists, and videographers through some of the best that VR has to offer. Here's what we think.
Aug 2, 2016, 7:55 PM UTCAdi Robertson
Everest VR is not like climbing a mountain, and it shouldn’t have to be
Beautiful, but just a beginning
Jul 22, 2016, 5:45 PM UTCAdi Robertson
I’m too motion-sick to finish this cool VR game, so I made some GIFs to explain why
I’m going to go lie down now
Jul 1, 2016, 5:41 PM UTCAdi Robertson
A Dark Souls of VR would be wonderful — here’s how you’d make it
But actually developing it will be really, really hard
May 24, 2016, 1:10 PM UTCAlessandra Potenza
Time Machine is the closest you can get to Jurassic Park in virtual reality
Experience a decomposing dinosaur being eaten by dakosauruses
May 5, 2016, 3:24 PM UTCAdi Robertson
How virtual reality can change the way we see gender and horror movies
Men, women, and headsets
May 2, 2016, 8:11 PM UTCPaul Miller
I saw something horrible and wrong in VR
And I don't want to go back
Apr 11, 2016, 6:19 PM UTCAdi Robertson
Chronos is a VR game about stress, skill, and the weirdness of fiction
It doesn't need VR, but it wouldn't exist without it
Apr 1, 2016, 2:02 PM UTCBen Popper
Strategy games in virtual reality: I am a mighty but overworked god
When you trade awareness for immersion, things get complicated very quickly
Mar 30, 2016, 2:30 PM UTCLoren Grush
Adrift is as close as most of us will get to a spacewalk — nausea and all
Comparing virtual astronauts to the real ones
Mar 26, 2016, 2:53 PM UTCRoss Miller
The Little Prince in VR is like a diorama come to life
Sometimes the best interaction is having literally nothing to press.The Rose and I is a short piece by Penrose Studio that made its world premiere this past January at Sundance Film Festival. Loosely based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little
Mar 10, 2016, 4:39 PM UTCRussell Brandom
The future of virtual reality games is soul-killing office work
When writers dreamed about virtual reality 20 years ago, they imagined putting on a headset and being whisked away to golden beaches or powdery slopes. Instead, I used it to go to a low-polygon office floor.
Mar 10, 2016, 3:18 PM UTCBen Popper
Space Pirate Trainer is a VR game that reminds you why having a body is fun
I play a lot of video games, and most of the time, my body intrudes on the experience in the form of physical pain. A crick in my neck or the tendonitis in my wrist acting up. My time in the HTC Vive Pre provided a the opposite experience.
Mar 9, 2016, 8:53 PM UTCAdi Robertson
The Brookhaven Experiment is your endless, inevitable virtual reality death
One of the very first games I played in virtual reality was Valve's clumsy Oculus Rift port of Half-Life 2. The Half-Life series, which helped define a generation of first-person shooters, is a blend of super-fast action and survival horror. They’re not complicated games — you pick up an increasing number of weapons and use them to kill enemies that drop ammunition or health packs, while trying to reach freedom and save the world. But they revel in improbable power. Players start out in a train and end in a high-security alien stronghold or a parallel dimension, having methodically cut through hundreds of hostiles and surmounted seemingly impossible barriers through the clever use of physics.
Mar 8, 2016, 2:54 PM UTCAdi Robertson
Budget Cuts is like Mission Impossible crossed with Portal in virtual reality
Throwing knives, killer robots, and a very important job application
Feb 28, 2016, 6:00 PM UTCAdi Robertson
Painter of light: my awkward adventures in virtual reality art
I swear it looks better in VR