Playing Overwatch is a lot of fun on its own, but just imagine how much more fun it would be if you could be your favorite hero. That's what South Korean high school students did by using their own motion-tracking rig, a wired-up gun controller and a virtual reality headset to create their own immersive Overwatch experience.
The students of the Gyeonggibuk Science High School's science club SADA created the above video to show off their ingenious project, along with some diagrams and progress pictures to show exactly how they made it work. The gameplay starts around 2:33, which gives a good idea of how everything functions.
The VR headset is used to look around while leaning on the harness will move the character (in this case, Soldier: 76). Jumping makes Soldier: 76 jump, and bowing forward makes him crouch. The in-game gun fires when the gun controller's trigger is pulled, reloads when the pump is pumped, and abilities are triggered by buttons on the gun and headset or motion sensors on the side of the gun.
Everything is wired to Arduino boards, which take all of these actions and re-map them to their specific mouse and keyboard actions in Overwatch. There is a little bit of a delay to some of the actions like jumping, but this is a seriously impressive setup.
Topics Esports Gaming Virtual Reality
