MVR - Virtual Reality System
VR headset that brings older games into virtual reality.
The Ascend VR headset is a backwards-compatible virtual reality system designed to let players experience older, non-VR games in an immersive format. MVR Global came to D2M with the concept and D2M worked with them over the course of a year to develop the headset, controllers and electronics through to working prototype.
The Story
Most VR systems are built around new games designed specifically for the platform. MVR Global saw a gap: the large back catalogue of existing games that VR had left behind. The brief was to build a system that could bring those games into VR rather than starting from scratch.
That created two specific technical problems. The first was optical: the headset needed both 2D and 3D lens solutions to mirror a smartphone screen correctly. The second was control: older games expect conventional inputs, not head movement. D2M worked with CircuitWorx, a UK electronics developer, on a system that translates gyroscopically measured head movement into the standard control inputs a game can read. The project produced working prototypes of the headset, electronics and controllers.
The Outcome
MVR Global exhibited the working prototype at EGX, the UK's largest games expo, alongside established names in the industry, ahead of a planned crowdfunding campaign.
