Freedom Locomotion System Review

I finally had the chance to try the super-praised Freedom Locomotion System by ZapTruder (or Huge Robot, as you prefer). Freedom Locomotion System is this new locomotion method invented by this Japanese guy, that works this way:

• You stand in the VR experience (so, you’re not seated);
• You use the VR controller that you hold in your hand to decide the direction you want to go. You do not decide this by pointing the controller, but by pointing simply a thumbstick on the controller with your thumb;
• You walk in place to walk in virtual reality towards the direction that you specified at the previous point. The faster you walk-in-place, the faster you move in virtual reality.

Gabe Newell AMA shows great news for Vive (but no Half Life 3, sorry)

Everyone these days is focused on the trial Oculus vs Zenimax (if you don’t know what I’m talking about… you can start getting an idea looking at good articles like this one). I think that it’s something interesting, but it’s nothing more than VR gossip, something that I like to read while grabbing popcorns. Honestly I don’t think Zenimax will win this trial (just a gut feeling eh, I don’t have any evidence or such) and from a technical standpoint I don’t find this battle interesting.

I think that focusing on that stuff, lot of people lost the focus on the most important virtual reality thing of the day: the AMA of Gabe Newell on reddit. The fat copy of Harry Potter and other Valve employees stood there on /r/The_Gaben to answer all questions. Some were just random curiosity questions like “Have you ever been to Amsterdam?”, others were focused on Steam (someone asked about seeing pornography games on Steam… and no, guys, it won’t happen, sorry), others on games like Half Life 3 (he answered “The number 3 must not be said” ahahhahaha), then, of course, there have been questions about virtual reality. You can read all the AMA here or you can get an extract of most valuable Q&A here on Kotaku. Here I just want to comment two key posts.

My little bad experience with SteamVR and Oculus

Today I wanted to try some VR demos on Steam. I own only an Oculus Rift, but we all know the fantastic work that Valve has made to make their environment compatible with every kind of headset, Oculus included, so I decided to give a try to something anyway.

My Oculus is ready within SteamVR… will it be enough?

Well, I have to say that I’m quite disappointed. Lots of games support Vive only, so you can’t try them. I wanted to try the IKEA VR experience, for instance, but I wasn’t even able to have a first look at it: a distorted first screen said that only Vive was supported and so, owning Oculus Rift, I couldn’t cook Swedish meat ball. Damn!