Virtual reality and sports go hand-in-hand. Whether you are watching games or playing them, VR has the ability to enhance a sporting experience. The latest advancement in sporting VR is the Virtual Reality Football Club (VRFC) from Cherry Pop Games.
VRFC is a first-person football (soccer) game where the player controls an avatar and uses the unique agile locomotion mechanic to run, pass and score. The games in VRFC are four-on-four with goalies controlled by AI. This isn’t the first sports game in social VR but it is one of the most technically ambitious games set to hit the market.
In Cherry Pop Games’ Research and Development Department (Cherry Labs), it has been working on ways to get around in the virtual world. “Agile Locomotion is an innovative intended form of locomotion which allows you run, sprint and kick a ball in VR with no physical discomfort,” the company wrote on Playstation.blog.
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The game is scheduled for release on Tuesday. Apparently Sony didn’t get the memo because it was accidentally up on the PlayStation store on the release date. PlayStation VR uploaded a live stream of first impressions of the game to YouTube and there are clearly still a couple of kinks to work out.
Cherry Pop Games commented on the video and said, “This is a BETA build and is not meant to be released. This is a Sony error and has now been removed. The patch has not been released and this is not the build that will be released on the 6th.”
It is unclear how much different the released game will be from the Beta version in that video. Regardless, the ability to run and pass to a teammate in real time is a massive step forward in the capabilities of social VR.
On the purchase of the Oculus Rift by Facebook in 2014, Mark Zuckerberg said, “(VR) will be the most social platform ever.” Sports games like VRFC are another step towards making that statement a reality.