New player enters VR market

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This article was published 15/12/2017 (2321 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

People in padded rooms seeing imaginary things and talking to and acting against those hallucinations.

In the old days, they called that drying out in the hoosegow.

Today, it’s a virtual reality game room.

Ctrl V, which bills itself as a virtual reality “arcade,” has its grand opening today.

Ctrl V brings to four the number of virtual reality gaming centres in the city. The first to open just over a year ago was The Portal, now in the Exchange District. Robert Fedoruk said his Ctrl V arcade is by far the largest and capable of hosting sizable parties.

Virtual reality (VR) gaming puts a player inside a 3D, 360-degree video game.

Ctrl V has 16 VR stations — 10-by-10-foot rooms that are like large cubicles. The rooms are padded, including the floors, mainly to protect the equipment, but also customers who become disoriented. The facility includes a party room for events like birthday parties.

Games range from Cowbots and Aliens and Space Pirate Trainer; to zombie target practice; golf; and what amounts to a job fair, where a person experiences various occupations, including convenience store clerk and office worker.

Media were invited to put on the VR goggles for free demonstrations on Friday and the Free Press chose probably the most tepid option: miniature golf. In no time, the neophyte gamer was unselfconsciously kneeling on the green that wasn’t there to line up shots with a putter and ball that didn’t exist, looking like an old Red Skelton sketch.

“You become very quickly fully immersed,” said Fedoruk, 50.

“I’ve been trying to tell family and friends what (virtual reality) is like. You have to just put a headset on and try it yourself.”

Ctrl V has 11 titles in its game library and will add five new ones per month. Its library has the capacity for 75 games.

For today’s grand opening, people will be able to test drive Ctrl V’s virtual reality games for free.

VR, hailed as the next mainstream technology, has not taken off as anticipated, including in the gaming sector. But Fedoruk and others see it having untapped potential.

While the gaming industry has been an early adopter of the technology, there are some new applications being explored, including being used as an aide to helping people with dementia, Fedoruk said. Bit Space Development Ltd. in Winnipeg develops VR platforms for training employees, including apprenticing electricians.

There are numerous potential education applications, including providing students field trips to places they can’t visit physically.

In Britain, the British Museum uses VR to place people in the Bronze Age, while the Natural History Museum in London has a VR platform of David Attenborough’s naturalist works, replete with a hologram of the broadcaster.

VR movies or documentaries are being researched.

Meanwhile, Citi Research has forecasted the VR gaming markets to grow to US$80 billion by 2020 and US$560 billion by 2025.

Fedoruk, who has been in management positions in IT, said he’d grown tired of the corporate management world and was looking for something else. He thought he might perhaps invest in a restaurant or sporting goods franchise.

He fell in love with the VR concept after visiting Ctrl V in Waterloo, Ont., where the company started in 2016. There are about 15 other Ctrl V franchises, including ones in Edmonton, Lethbridge and Red Deer in Alberta. The company has a single, free station at the Kitchener Public Library.

Ctrl V allows friends to play multiplayer games. Friends can also split an hour in a single studio. People can view a gamer’s progress on a TV screen from the gamer’s point of view outside the gaming studios.

It has a staff of six part-time high school and university students.

Other virtual reality gaming sites in Winnipeg include New World Virtual Reality Studio on Notre Dame Avenue, and DoVR on Sterling Lyon Parkway.

Ctrl V, at 1045 St. James St., charges $25.99 per person per hour.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca