Recreation Builders Convention in San Francisco Exhibits Off Tech to Make Video games Extra Immersive and Extra Actual – NBC Bay Space

The Game Developers Conference returned to San Francisco this year, with attendance returning to pre-pandemic levels and hundreds of exhibits lining the underground halls of the Moscone Center.

As players lined up to try out the latest VR demos from major sponsors like Meta and PlayStation, one of them summed up a main theme of the show: “We make games that interact with our actual world.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, gamers could only enter the virtual worlds of video games via a handheld controller and a television in the living room.

“It was the golden age,” quipped one developer playing Super Mario World on a Super Nintendo at the conference. “We thought these graphics looked like real life.”

The Super Nintendo console was part of an exhibition of 8-bit and 16-bit video games set up by Oakland’s Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment.

“We hope to inspire the next generation by helping them look back in useful ways,” said Rob Curl, the museum’s historian. “People had to be creative in other ways when making games for these older systems.”

Video games of the 1980s didn’t have music recorded with acoustic instruments or lifelike 3D characters. But this year’s GDC featured an entire area of ​​Moscone South Convention Hall dedicated to audio gaming and an eye-catching display of skateboarders performing tricks on a ramp while high-speed infrared cameras recorded them from multiple angles.

“To measure their position in 3D in real-time so we can capture their precise movements,” explained Thierry Chevalier, OptiTrack sales manager. “We would then be able to get pro skaters to have their own signature tricks in play.”

3D motion capture also plays a role in the development of video games based on a hip hop dance show called “Fray,” which follows the lives and challenges of two video game developing brothers.

“It just started out like, ‘Hey, we should put a video game on the show – that would be some interesting creative storytelling,'” said Kate Duhamel, founder and creative director of Candy Bomber Productions. “And then it was like, ‘No, we’re supposed to do a real game.'”

They ended up making two games — including the mobile rhythm-based game “Fray Jam,” which is now available on Apple’s App Store, and a more complicated PC game that’s now in the final stages of production, Duhamel said. The games follow the storyline of the dance show and also share some of the choreography.

“You turn on music and ask it to freestyle,” Duhamel said of the motion capture process. “How to create a whole motion library… for the avatars in the game.”

Across the street from the conference, Epic Games showcased its latest technology for facial feature capture and photorealistic human avatars. It was Epic’s first keynote speech at GDC in four years, and the presentation focused on the latest in 3D rendering technology and ever-expanding metaverses, including the virtual world of Epic’s own hit game, Fortnite.

With all the focus on emerging technologies like VR and AR headsets and NFTs, Epic Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney reminded audiences that millions of people are already immersing themselves in wide-open metaverses using just their smartphones and desktop computers every day.

“[There are]over 600 million active users in these virtual worlds,” Sweeney said. “This revolution is happening right now.”

But the new technologies are developing fast. At GDC, the latest virtual reality hardware showcased eye and hand tracking, gloves and vests that throb and vibrate when a player is hit, and a new motorized swivel chair that allows players to move around virtual space without bumping into real walls and coffee tables.

“They are stationary but infinitely mobile,” explained PNI sales manager Won Cho when demonstrating the new chair. “When you press the pedal down, (your character) goes forward. If you push it backwards, it would go backwards.”

GDC’s alternative controller show, aptly named Alt.Ctrl, showcased new and experimental forms of game control.

“We created this whole installation just to play our game,” explained Sara Brugioli, pointing to a contraption that resembled a life-size shopping cart stuck in a door and made entirely of plywood.

The wooden shopping cart is part of a two-player video game called Grocery Trip that started as a student project. One player pushes and steers the cart while a second player sits in the cart, grabbing items from the shelves and hitting other customers who get in their way. Brugioli said it was inspired by real events.

“A guy at the mall actually stopped in front of me,” Brugioli explained mid-aisle to check his phone. “And I thought… this is so annoying. I wish I could hit you now.”

Brugioli said, then the proverbial lightbulb went on.

“And I was like, ‘Oh my god, that would actually be a good game,'” she said.

Some alternative control games could end up being made into arcade machines, while others serve to experiment with new ways of getting players to interact with each other.

“Haber Dasher” is a research project by Ph.D. Contestant Erin Truesdell, in which two players must control a single avatar together by putting their heads in a giant shared hat. Almost the size of a small car, the hat soared high above the other exhibits and dangled from the ceiling on heavy steel cables. Players shouted instructions to each other as they attempted to tilt the brim of the hat in different directions to navigate.

“It was really great to see people in line making friends when they find someone to play with,” Truesdell said. “It’s a hat that’s also a networking opportunity.”

Like most of the alternative control games on display, Haber Dasher is designed to engage and immerse players in the way they control it – not through photorealistic graphics or surround sound. Rob Curl was quick to point out that the games of the 1980s and 1990s didn’t have that kind of realism either – and yet today’s kids still enjoy playing them.

“These games are still fun,” he said. “They still provide that similar emotional response. No matter how old you are.”