If virtual reality is designed to transport you to a different time and/or place, then this experience might be among the ultimate for doing just that.  That’s because unlike most VR, where you’re sitting in a chair in front of a computer or video game console, Zero Latency VR is an experience where you walk, run, crouch, and jump around an open space in the real world in order to do all those same things in a virtual world.

“You put on a backpack, grab a gun, put on your headset and you’re walking around moving, ducking, waving and shooting,” says Tim Ruse of Zero Latency. “Everything you do maps perfectly to what you see inside the video game. We bring people in in groups of six and they play a game for about 45-50 minutes and it’s a zombie apocalypse simulator. You and up to five other friends see whether you can survive against the hordes."  

Therefore, you do not maim yourself inside the space, the physical walls are mapped to the virtual walls in the game so that you know where they are. Plus, warnings go off inside your headset if you’re getting too close to an actual wall. And even though the physical room can be as small as 2,000 square feet, developers use some digital magic that allows you use just that space, yet walk around a setting that can be several times its size.

"We use a series of tricks, lifts and level loads, to make sure that you are traveling forwards in the game but reusing the space, and that allows us to cover a much larger area in virtual space than we are in physical space,” Ruse says.

Right now, clearly, this is technology being used for fun, but down the line...

“It feels a bit like the birth of cinema to us,” Ruse says. “It’s a completely new medium of entertainment. Obviously just playing games and entertainment is the first step, but we see applications for training, for health, for tourism, traveling, having virtual holidays even in the future."

So, the good news with Zero Latency VR is that it exists. The bad news, right now; it only exists in Australia, though developers plan to bring it here to the U.S.by the second half of next year.