Climbing outside the box

Now we're finally getting to the thing that made me want to start to blog about all this in the first place. Ever since I made my Biped Box experiment, I'd fantasized about what it would be like to move around in a similar way through a world that was more than the inside of a box. I did some more experiments inside, but they left me frustrated at how limiting it is to be stuck in a box, so in May I finally decided try to build a bigger world.

Building my first VR World

I decided to start simple:

• Everything would be made out of boxes. It's a pretty simple shape to work with, and it's solid.
• The boxes wouldn't have to be axis aligned though, that felt too limiting.

I wrote a small editor to place the boxes, which I will try to write about soon. But first I want to tell you about my experiences with the result.

I built a small world to jump around in, with a big box for ground, and some kind of big vine stretching up into the air, to some boxes that were floating there. I dropped into play mode and started trying to jump around on it. That's when I realized:

Climbing is a Thing!

Climbing around actually turned out to be a lot more fun than jumping! I'd spent quite a lot of time jumping around inside the Biped Box, but none of that had hinted at this, the box was just a too limited world. But the same bipedal hand walking mechanics in a bigger world turned out to enable climbing. Reaction from my son: "Dad, this is the best VR program you have ever made!"

Why do I find it so much fun? It's never easy to know for sure, but here are some things that I believe contribute:

• You have very good control of the whole thing.
• Unlike bipedal hand walking on flat ground, which is kind of dull, it always matters where you put your hands, which makes things interesting.
• Looking for ledges and planning ahead were you want to try to go.
• It evokes some of the thrills of real life climbing, but you're much more powerful. (At least compared to my own real life climbing skills!)
• You can do some pretty crazy tricks that you couldn't do in real life, like putting one hand on the ground and stretching out both arms in opposite directions to reach across a chasm.
• The sense of accomplishment when you have come far up and look down.
• The sense of immersion that comes from focusing on the present situation, lest you fall down.
• There seems to be a pretty big space of things to climb with different difficulty and various aspects that you need to master.

It's clear that my kids thinks that it's fun as well, because they've spent quite some time building and climbing obstacle courses (and some landscapes). Two of them are included in the download.

I also made one other change to the Biped Box dynamics: there's no infinite friction anymore. I set the friction coefficient so that you begin to slide if you try to stand on a surface that slopes by more than 55 degrees or so. If you move quickly, you will start to slip long before that. I find that it makes the experience a lot more interesting than if you can climb everywhere.

Do you have a Vive/Rift/similar headset and would like to try it out? Then please find Biped Blocks in the downloads section. I would be very interested to hear what you think about the climbing experience!