Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve seen the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset used in a variety of manners, such as for seeing through the eyes of a drone, or the more novel where it is used as added stimulant for an erotic video game. Well now if you’ve always wanted to experience what it’s like to be a paper boy on their route, Toronto company Globacore has decided to make a simple game that combines the Oculus Rift, a Kinect sensor, and a stationary bicycle that resulted in the revisitation of an Atari classic – Paperboy.

Through the use of a widget called Kickr, it will allow the game to track the pedaling speed of the bicycle. The Kinect will detect the paper-throwing motion, and the Oculus Rift will provide the immersive virtual reality experience to make you feel like you’re really riding down the streets and tossing newspapers onto the lawns of homeowners. The end result is a game called PaperDude VR and while it does not have the same level of graphics or complexity in gameplay that you might expect from modern titles, if you’ve ever played Paperboy back in the day, chances are this will bring back some fond memories.

Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | Oculus Rift And Kinect Used To Create A Paperboy Game original content from Ubergizmo.

Old school gamers will remember Paperboy, an arcade game — later ported to home systems like the NES and Atari ST — that let you savour the pleasure of virtually breaking your neighbours’ windows by tossing a rolled up newspaper through their front room as you powered past on your bike. Because that’s what passed for entertainment in 1984. Well, time and technology has moved on but creative tech company Globacore, which builds these sort of gaming mash-up installations, has decided to do an updated version of the Paperboy concept, because, well, why not?

PaperDude VR — as it’s called its updated creation — has been hacked together using an actual bike, a Wahoo Fitness KickR indoor resistance bike trainer, an Oculus Rift virtual reality head-set, and Microsoft’s gesture-recognising Kinect peripheral as the key parts of the puzzle. This set up — combined with a LEGO-esque 3D game world built in Unity — lets the PaperDude VR gamer actually pedal and actually toss (or at least make a throwing gesture) as they play the game.

What’s the point of all this? Well it’s mostly for the fun of it — and for Globacore to showcase what they can do — and it sure looks like a neat way to gamify a bike ride. But with the proliferation of connected and increasingly specialised gizmos, fuelled by crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, these sorts of reality simulations are only going to get easier and cheaper for people to hack together. Which is only a good thing for the creative future of gaming.