Step Into the VOID, Where VR Merges With the Real World

(electronic music)

[Narrator] When you use virtual reality at home,

you're always trying not to touch anything.

Your real-world surroundings, the thinking goes,

break the illusion of VR.

But it turns out that if you merge the two things,

you end up with an experience that's far more immersive.

At the Void, a quote hyper reality facility,

they're melding state-of-the-art VR tech

with real-world physicality, and in doing so

they're leading a wave of location-based VR.

It's a little bit video game, a little bit laser tag,

and feels more like an actual adventure

than anything else on the market.

[Man] And we have fire.

[Narrator] In the Void, every VR space

has a real-world counterpart,

so physical walls and real-world peripherals

intensify that tactility.

[Woman] Wow, where are we?

[Man] I thought this was inside.

No, we're outside.

It's a starry night.

When you step into a virtual world,

you step in untethered.

You step in wearing equipment

that is there not just to get you to see the environment,

but to feel it as well.

So this is the so-called back top system.

On the back, there is a computer and a big battery pack.

On the front, there's a bunch of haptics,

kind of rumble packs.

And then you put it on,

and then there's one more fun part.

Now with the headset, which is also part

of the Rapture system, a little bit of it

is kind of off the shelf, and a lot of it

is made special by the Void.

The HMD, the head mounter display,

is actually an Oculus Rift, and there is also

a Leap motion module on the front of it,

so it tracks your hands.

Still, seeing my hands is never gonna lose its appeal,

or novelty, hyper reality as they call it.

And then other stuff on the inside that they've made

themselves, but that's really the heart of the headset.

[Narrator] But for all this tech hyper reality

actually uses some old school magic theory.

Virtual reality, in its truest sense, is a form of magic.

Magic is just creating a new reality for people.

Using the tools that are available,

whether that's picking up a coin and using sleight of hand

to make someone think, even if it's just for a second,

that that coin could vanish.

That's a little reality that you

were able to create for them.

VR's the same way.

We're trying to create new realities that people believe in.

So it makes sense to use magic principles

to take that to its furthest extent

and really get people embedded and immersed in these worlds.

[Narrator] It's easy to assume that the void

would be in a tech or entertainment hotspot

like Seattle or Silicon Valley or Los Angeles.

But it's here.

A half hour outside Salt Lake City.

While the company has plans to expand

to other cities in the near future,

for now they're keeping it local.

We've learned a lot this year about the process

of getting people into the void and out of the void,

and the best way to do that, most efficient way to do that,

how do we track them as accurately as possible,

how do we get them to interact with objects

as accurately as possible, how do we represent

where their eyes are looking and what their emotions are?

The people around them, because there's,

so much communication is nonverbal.

We wanna capture that and that's been

one of the bigger technical challenges we've had.

But one that fortunately we don't have to just solve

ourselves 'cause there's a whole industry out there

trying to also solve this very problem.

If I walk over to a wall and I reach out

to touch that wall, I'm gonna feel it.

And if it's bricks I'm gonna feel the bricks.

If I, if something blows up.

Whoa!

Okay, the door exploded. You feel that?

Yeah.

Everything just went off.

That haptic feedback is really something.

[Curtis] I'm gonna feel the blast of that explosion,

if there's fire I'm gonna feel

that heat. Ah, it's warm.

It's more than just your eyes,

reality is way more than just your eyes.

And so we represent all of those things in the void,

to different degrees.

And it's the compilation of these sensory effects

that combine together to create a new reality.

And then we just, don't just make a regular reality,

we make an impossible reality for you to play in.

(electronic beat)

So, I have done a lot of things in virtual reality.

But I can't say I've ever done something

that brought together so many different

types of experiences into a single one,

let alone one that was so completely unique.

[Narrator] The end result combines elements

of video games, movies, and real world obstacle courses.

But the fact that you share the experience

with other people makes it more than the sum of its parts.

Your partners aren't logged in at computers

hundreds of miles away, they're

right there with you in the room.

And that social aspect sticks with you

long after you come out.

It's not hard to imagine that this is gonna get

VR into the hands and onto the faces

of many, many, many, many more people

than might have tried it otherwise.