The goal of this experiment was to have these two VR giants face off in a single multiplayer VR game. The Vive player controls a large Godzilla-like monster that we called the Vivezilla, while an Oculus player control a tank that moves along the ground trying to take down this mighty beast.
The first question we hoped to answer with this experiment was, “Can these two different pieces of hardware even work together in the same game?” As it turns out, yes they can. Given that possibility, we were able to explore the asymmetric gameplay options opened up by the different affordances allowed by the Vive and Oculus hardware.
The Vive’s room-scale tracking and motion controllers made it a much better option for the city-destroying monster. It’s always fun to flail your arms around to knock stuff over (in a safe environment, of course). Meanwhile, we felt a more traditional First-Person-Shooter experience would be a good fit for the Oculus, since it was limited to gamepad control at the time (Oculus Touch was yet to be released).
The biggest idea we tackled with this prototype was certainly trying to pit the two different headsets against each other simultaneously, but this project also served as yet more affirmation that a VR environment is rich with opportunities for asymmetric gameplay.
You can test this experiment and access source code at this repo
Try it out!
RIT VR Design 