This new mixed reality game concept is incredibly cool
Resolution Games has presented a promising multiplayer game idea using Meta's latest mixed reality API.
Imagine being able to virtually visit a friend's apartment with your Meta Quest. Not as a human, but as a tiny mouse. And cooperatively overcome mixed reality obstacles and solve environmental puzzles with your now giant friend.
Resolution Games presented such a game concept at a GDC session in March. The internal experiment is called "Lab Rats" and, according to CEO Tommy Palm, is the result of a hackathon.
In the short presentation (see YouTube video below), Palm made it clear that Lab Rats is just a concept and not something the studio will release. Still, it's an exciting idea and the most creative use of Meta's new mixed reality API I've seen so far.
Camera access on Quest opens up new possibilities
I'm talking about the Passthrough Camera API, also known as PCA. It allows developers to access the Quest's RGB cameras for the first time and apply proprietary computer vision algorithms and AI models to the video material in real time. PCA is currently in experimental status, and its use is not permitted in the Horizon Store, but that is likely to change in the coming months.
At the GDC presentation, Resolution Games, Niantic Spatial, and Creature showcased initial use cases for the API.
The mixed reality concept Lab Rats uses camera access to create a textured 3D model of the room, which then becomes the game environment. With the current Quest 3 and 3S room scanning, it is only possible to create a rough 3D model of the environment without textures.
The game concept behind Lab Rats
Once your room is digitized, you can invite other players into the digital replica.
In Lab Rats, the "guests" become tiny rodents that scurry around the host's real room. The guests, in turn, move through the digital replica of the room, seeing the host as an avatar, both on a grand scale and reminiscent of the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Hosts and guests play with each other instead of against each other, solving mixed reality obstacles and puzzles together, just like in other asymmetric titles such as VR Giants, Davigo, and Panoptic.
Lab Rats is inspired by an earlier game from the studio, Acron: Attack of The Squirrels, which VR and smartphone players play together. It is not clear from the presentation whether the guests would play on a smartphone or a VR headset, but the latter would seem much more immersive. After all, the unusual scale would be more impressive in VR.
Lab Rats is just a concept, but I hope that Resolution Games will take the idea and develop it further in some way.
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