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The San Francisco-based virtual reality start-up, Sandbox VR, has teamed up with CBS Interactive to launch a new Star Trek virtual reality (VR) experience this fall. "Star Trek: Discovery Away Mission" will allow up to 6 friends to enter the world of the series, with phasers and tricoders, as well as a holodeck.
The new location will first be available in existing VR Sandbox locations in Hong Kong, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, and then in new locations in New York, Austin, San Diego and Chicago soon. after.
In many ways, working on a "Star Trek" VR experience was a dream come true for the Sandbox VR team. Product Manager Siqui Chen said Variety during an interview this week that the company had long been inspired by the series. "We wanted to create a version 0.1 of the holodeck," he said.
Sandbox executives spoke of this vision when they met with CBS some time ago and the broadcaster offered to do so: create a real holodeck for a "Star Trek" virtual reality experience.
The result is an experiment that asks players to investigate a distress signal from a lost spaceship, which involves visiting an ice moon and locating the ship – a mission that obviously begins with the use of the holodeck VR. "This is probably the dream of a lifetime that will become reality for Star Trek fans," said game designer Michael Hampden, who led the experiment for Sandbox VR.
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The experience is guided by Sylvia Tilly (Mary Wiseman), starfleet officer from Star Trek Discovery, and lasts nearly 30 minutes. There are some fighting situations, but Hampden said he would focus more on collective problem solving than on one person shooting scenarios. "We are trying to recreate the Star Trek experience," he said.
Sandbox VR is a start-up company looking to bring virtual reality out of their homes, malls and other places. One of the differences with virtual reality operators such as The Void is that Sandbox puts less emphasis on physical benchmarks. There are no real doors to open and you will not come across any accessories when you travel the Ice Moon.
Instead, players will be able to see each other and see their friends in virtual reality – with the option of looking at each other's fingers or giving each other high-five. "We capture the movements of the whole body," said Chen. "You are followed from head to toe."
This allows Sandbox to manage multiple experiences on each site and function effectively a little more like a movie theater that can show different movies one after the other in the same room. "All of our experiences are available on all our sites," Hampden said.
This vision seems to echo investors, who earlier this year gave the company $ 68 million for its global expansion. Overall, Sandbox VR plans to install 16 sites by the end of the year.
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