Blair Renaud Just Made Me Cry In VR
Number one fact: I’m not a gamer (except for Echo Arena). I’m an UX tester with a love of hard sci-fi. I just finished Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age again. Wow. But tonight the whole cyberpunk thing just blew up in my face.
Blair Renaud @Anticleric is the creator of TECHNOLUST for Oculus and now an actual frickin living god of VR devs. (At least for me!) Why might you ask? Well, it goes like this…
I work for www.FishBowlVR.com as an UX/UI tester and sometimes I cold tweet VR devs whose work I admire and see if I can pick up a beta build to break. This I did with Blair some time ago, tried it with my Vive via ReVive but without joysticks it just didn’t work. So I forgot all about it until the other day after my Rift arrived (thank you Craig’s List!)
After fighting with SteamVR and leftover Vive bits and bobs on my backup gaming rig I remembered the Technolust demo build Blair had sent me all those months back and now I had a Rift!
So without any expectation I fired it up and BANG I’m sitting in the cockpit of a spinner looking out on what might as well be wet and dismal 2019 Los Angeles complete with neon, holograms, traffic, high-speed trains and a floating space ship overhead. Launch sequence initiated and I’m flying through a cyberpunk dream with the steady hum of the ion drive at my back. BUT WAIT!!! Where is the Vangelis?
Back to square one. Google, click, back, click, BINGO! Thanks to Thulf of MicSpamming and a download of VB-Audio virtual cable plus the complete Blade Runner soundtrack on YouTube and I’m in. But wait… the controls are frozen! Nooooo!!! Restart, this time with the music already rolling and bang! Launch sequence initiated!
Now I’m flying through post climate change LA with those amazing synth power chords driving shards of emotion up my spine, and the tears start to flow. I’m literally in one of my all-time favorite movies, controlling the action, the direction and the speed while the epic soundtrack carries me both back in time to 1983 and to the future when all this is real.
It’s now much later and I’m still reeling from the emotional intensity of the experience. My inner ear is still tilting the world as I type, the last chords of Vangelis are fading from the headset, now abandoned on the desk by my controllers. Words fail to convey the power of the experience. Flying along the canal through the feet of a bump and grinding 70m tall holographic go-go girl, doing canyon runs toward glowing neon outposts, blasting heavenward then turning to simply look back at the city spread below, landing on a rooftop and illuminating a nearby building with the landing lights, even doing pursuit with full lights and sirens, all so fucking epic it made me cry.
All I can say is now is: Thank you Blair! For creating this gem and for being generous with your art. Technolust with the Blade Runner soundtrack will now be my go to VR demo for any sci-fi friends that finally crack and give VR a serious try. And yes I will keep a box of tissue close at hand!
