153: Killing zombies in virtual reality

This is an interesting and brief piece I happened across this afternoon -- and, let's face it, who among us can resist a title like What it's like to kill zombies in virtual reality. (Click the title to read the article.) Why I thought my readers might be interested is that this seems to indicate that in gaming terms, VR games are actively in development. Just like Sansar is moving into the same arena as Second Life, other types of games are finding their big threat may be from virtual-reality-based games.
   The other thing I thought might be of interest is that the writer's experience is quite reassuring in a couple of ways. He is playing the kind of game that requires the user to learn how to perform activities like loading a gun, and to do this action accurately so as not to be killed out of the scene. Near the end of the piece, he says he "can't get enough". Although there is no similar activity in Second Life, I think many Residents would understand the need to manipulate the controls of the game in a sophisticated and rapid way so as not to demonstrate a noobish unfamiliarity. What I take from his pleasure is that it's easy to figure out how to do things in VR if the animations are there ... and that once you figure out how, it's a pleasant experience.  I think that should be reassuring to SL Residents that if you want to make the leap to Sansar in the near future, the learning curve is relatively easy.
   And finally -- if you think about it, the fact that a gamer-oriented site like Polygon is sufficiently interested to produce a little article like this, more like a gloss on an experience than anything else, means that they're interested in anything and everything to do with VR platforms. So as time goes on, I expect there to be more and more information about VR-based games in my feed.  Good; I'm curious.