The interactive experiences on the gaming platform Roblox are about to get a whole lot more immersive.
Roblox announced on Friday its expansion to virtual reality with the launch on Oculus Rift with cross-platform capability.
With over 20 million monthly visitors, this means that Roblox will now be the largest social virtual reality platform in the world. Now, gamers will be able to use the Oculus Rift headset to experience the wide variety of games like never before.
"All of the experiences on Roblox work on Roblox VR, they're just way more immersive," CEO David Baszucki told Tech Times. "When you're doing bird simulator on a screen in Roblox, you're kind of looking through this kind of portal. When you do the bird simulator in VR, you see the trees go by the sides of your head — you feel like you're right in there," he explained.
Adding VR capabilities does not change the experience for those without a headset. Gamers will still be able to play with friends, say, if they are using a computer and their friend is playing on VR.
Of course, using the Oculus Rift will transform gamers into the worlds they create and play.
"It [VR] will transcend you a bit more," Baszucki said.
This means the player might feel like their friends are right there with them — which is fitting for the platform's social and interactive philosophy. It might also make a game you have played dozens of times before feel new, since you get to actually walk up to things and get a closer look in the world.
While you might forget the fact that you are in virtual reality, you might worry that your body might remind you with motion sickness after spending hours in the games. To avoid this, Roblox has spent a lot of time optimizing the character and camera controls for VR to make the experiences smooth and comfortable. There are also options for playing in first- or third-person in VR.
While Roblox VR is only available for the Oculus right now, the platform has plans for gamers to be able to also use other VR headsets, like HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, Sony Morpheus and Google Cardboard — especially the latter, since Roblox for mobile is so popular. This also means players will be able to use compatible VR controllers to do things like physically open a door, further making the games and social experiences feel even more real.
Also, while players will be excited to play a wide library of games in VR, developers get to say that they created games for virtual reality without having previous experience or needing sophisticated software to do so.
"The notion that a junior game developer who is just trying things out, who might put together a few simple assets and make a very first cut of a Roblox experience, for it to immediately go not just on their phone or their tablet, computer and now the Xbox, but also on a VR headset to be able to play their creation is really exciting," Baszucki said.
This is the platform's second big expansion after successfully launching back in January for the Xbox, and becoming the top free downloaded app. It seemed that supporting virtual reality was the next logical step.
"We think VR is over time the ultimate platform for Roblox," said Baszucki. "We're creating this imagination platform where it's all about your friends doing things together, this core human need of not just communicating, but doing real things together — VR ultimately is going to make that more immersive than anything before."
This step, Baszucki revealed, actually became a reality much more quickly than he imagined. This is mostly because Roblox has a philosophy that experiences built can work on any device, so since it's already on the engine, it was easy to add Oculus support.
However, will Roblox gamers embrace the expansion to VR? While Baszucki said that, in the short-term, it's unpredictable whether or not VR will become more widely-adapted in general, he thinks it could very well be the way of the future.
"We firmly believe long-term all display will be VR and augmented reality displays," he said. "And if you look way out into the future, having a computer with a display on it or having a phone with display will be as foreign as a typewriter. Everything we see will be VR or AR, it's just a matter of time."
Roblox gamers with Oculus Rift can start playing and building in virtual reality starting today.
