Rec Room Virtual Playground and Communications Hub
Rec Room is a multi-user shared immersive virtual environment created by innovative designers and programmers at the Seattle-based company, Against Gravity.
Bruce and James recently visited Against Gravity community designer Shawn Whiting within Rec Room. Everyone arrived wearing their custom-made avatar outfits. James (on the right) is dressed in a tailored suit while Shawn (left) came to our meeting in a flight suit.
Bruce took this photo using a virtual camera that produced an image that could be passed around and shared with others in the lounge.
Rec Room Features
Rec Room is designed from the ground up as an immersive shared virtual entertainment space where participants can create a unique character, and travel to various environments to play games, socialize, and interact with a wide variety of in-world devices.
Rec Room members use a wrist interface that lets them interact with various devices and Rec Room environments. Players can play frisbee, basketball, paintball, darts, charades, co-op quests, golf, or use a wide variety of creative tools such as a camera, whiteboards, or 3D drawing tools.
Rec Room Social Design
One of the most remarkable aspects of Rec Room is how subtle human gestures, eye movements and other kinds of non-verbal communication are represented. Even though characters are cartoon-like in appearance, they’re able to deliver a wide range of visual expressions and cues.
In this series of screenshots from the Against Gravity blog, a variety of simple eye brow, eye pupil, and mouth movements are delivered by way of normal conversational chat.
Invitation from Rec Room
Rec Room is currently free and available from Steam software for virtual reality devices, including the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and Sony PlayStation VR. The social application is open and welcome to everyone, as it states on the Against Gravity blog:
Rec Room is a fun and welcoming environment for people from all walks of life! Come and join the fun for free!
