Maria Sharapova has pulled out of the US Open because of leg injury, but she’ll still be playing loads of tennis there the next few weeks - sort of. At the American Express Fan Experience, visitors to the US Tennis Center will get to don a virtual reality headset to see if they can, in what is an extremely realistic demo, return some serves fired at them by a virtual Sharapova.
“You can look 360 degrees all the way around you,” says Stephen Hess of ReelFX. “You’re surrounded by this world and so in this particular experience, you’re sitting on a US Open practice court, you’ve got a racquet in your hand that you can move around and there’s Maria and a coach there that'll talk you through the experience.”
Now, one of the reasons this is big news in the tech world? This is one of the very first hands-on, or heads-on, experiences with the HTC Vive, one of the most cutting-edge, perhaps the most cutting edge virtual reality headset that’s going to hit the market within about the next year or so.
What makes the Vive a bit different from competitors like the Oculus Rift or Sony’s Project Morpheus, the Vive is part of a system that includes these so-called “light houses” that can detect motion - meaning it is not VR that’s meant only to be played sitting or standing in one spot.
“It expects you to move around as opposed to some other headsets where you’re sitting, usually sitting or standing in one place, here you’re moving around, you’ve got a wand that you can move around in 3D space and see something move with you."
The system is designed to work in about a 200-square foot space so you won’t necessarily be running around your house with it. However, the technology is being eyed as a way to make everything from other sports to virtual tourism to virtual classrooms even more immersive and realistic.