Journey to the 2025 "Oasis" - Meet the "Wade Watts" in 2018

Italian Developer Accomplishes the Feat of Living in VR for 30 Days

AMSTERDAM, April 12, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- 2025 marks the year when the virtual world Oasis in the blockbuster Ready Player One was first deployed. As everyone starts to wonder when we can taste the life in the Oasis, HTC Vive brought the answer: 2018. Being the official VR partner of the movie, Vive has created eight VR experiences inspired by the movie in the form of an integrated title called OASIS Beta, aiming to present the perceptible world of Oasis in the form of games. However, the potential of virtual reality is far beyond games.

Having been completely immersed in the virtual world from 5, 6, 8, and eventually up to more than 16 hours per day, Enea Le Fons, an Italian developer kicked off his exceptional "30 Days in VR" journey just shortly before Ready Player One hit the theatres. Other than eating, sleeping and using the bathroom, Le Fons has spent all his waking time in VR for work, communication, exercise, and entertainment, making the distant 2025 Oasis a close reality.

"Everything I developed will be shared to the entire developer community as an open source. Inspired by HTC Vive, my goal is to foster the VR ecosystem with the community together by creating content favoring everyone, making VR an essential part of our daily life: work, education, leisure," he said. Le Fons, who has been fascinated by VR's possibilities for over 20 years, devotes himself to discovering the potentials of long-term use of VR while developing essential applications for sustainable living in VR.

Merging the virtual and physical worlds, Le Fons completely "moved" his physical studio to VR environment by coping the same layout and size of each furniture in reality, including table, chair and even tableware. More importantly, it is easier to achieve seamless integration between virtual and augmented reality than one may think. Le Fons just used an SLR camera and some free developing tools to have successfully "copied and pasted" his physical studio into virtual world. But what makes the VR-studio unique is its boundless space and its convertibility to enable various functions such as architectural design, exercises and leisure activities, all designed to support the idea of living in VR.

Inspired by Vive devices, Le Fons' creations are beyond imagination. You can explore the universe by hiking, running and climbing on other planets when eager to work out, where Vive trackers enabled all the free movements. You can have fun in a club by enjoying dancing all night long with sound reactive visual effects for leisure, with inspirations generated from Vive Focus's lightweight and world-scale portability. Furthermore, Le Fons has proved that mediating and dreaming are available in VR when listening to binaural beats sound track in a Vive Focus, allowing him to more easily find inner peace without outside distractions. Those applications are only part of Le Fons' accomplishments during the 30-day project created by using Vive Pro, Vive Focus, and Vive.

"Thanks to Vive, I was able to precisely track all the objects in the VR environment; with Vive trackers, free movement was enabled even when I was wearing the headset," said Le Fons. "What's more, with the advent of a comfortable device supporting long-term and intensive use like the Vive Pro, my productivity was also dramatically increased."  

There are also some intriguing data from Le Fons' Fitbit: He used to walk around 700 steps a day on average when working as an Unreal engine developer, but ever since he started to use Vive for content development, he walked over 10,000 steps a day, best could reach 16,000 steps, while his average cardiac rate dropped to 64 beats per minute. This proves that keeping fit in VR is not impossible if when equipped with the right devices that support not only seated, but also room-scale experience.

"I am very pleased to see that our products were able to meet the needs of such an intensive project, and also excited to see that Enea finished the program healthier and happier than ever," said Alvin W. Graylin, China Regional President of Vive, HTC. "I am getting more confident that VR can become an essential part of our daily life in the future. I welcome more VR enthusiasts and practitioners to challenge themselves for new breakthroughs in the industry."

Whether for the games already launched or for the VR lifestyle that Le Fons is exploring, what Vive strives to support is more than a scenario in a sci-fi movie, is a persistent ever-growing massively multiplayer online (MMO) universe that allows global developers to create and include content over time. As The Movie indicates, Oasis is the world where the only limit is your imagination. While we appreciate the bold attempt by the Italian Wade Watts, we welcome everyone of you to get on board with us on the journey to the 2025 Oasis. To explore more accomplishments by Le Fons, please visit https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wrsg66rw1t0fzqk/AAAzEWnuik97Qs_vDRYmFiMTa?dl=0 

SOURCE HTC Vive

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