However, the fundamentals of the gaming product are already in place and offer glimpses of a fully immersive future in sports gaming.
kicking around
Rezzil’s top priority for First division player was to make the game something that would appeal to the general public and not just players familiar with the mechanics of soccer.
“Someone’s grandmother could play this,” says Adam Dickinson, co-founder and design director of Rezzil. “You don’t have to be an athlete.”
Achieving that accessibility required some compromises, most notably in the game’s kicking mechanism: players “kick” by moving their arms while holding standard VR controllers at their sides, doing their best to approximate natural leg movements. . The default foot in the game appears at a 90-degree angle to the leg, as it would if you were standing on the ground, ideal for making and receiving passes; Holding the trigger button flexes the ankle and extends the player’s foot outward, mimicking the ideal position for a stronger shot or volley.
Like all game modes, kicking drills transport players to digital Premier League pitches. Players are asked to kick and receive passes to and from various goals. The easiest settings include “aim assist” and similar player aids that help modulate the speed and direction of the kick, while higher levels almost completely lack these crutches.
Dickinson tells me that Rezzil has already created and tested versions of PLP where players kick with their real feet. However, those versions require additional VR sensors that are purchased separately from the headset itself; Even virtual reality headsets with “inside-out” tracking cameras pointing outward still can’t perform the necessary tasks, Etches tells me. Many popular dance or space VR games use up to a dozen such sensors to track entire bodies, but Dickinson says Rezzil users would only need a pair. But even that additional cost (about $300, Etches says) seemed too prohibitive for the game’s initial release. By this time next year, however, expect to be able to kick the virtual ball by moving your real feet.
“We can flip a switch and get it going,” Dickinson says.
In its current format, PLPKicking exercises are the least realistic. But the other features of the game are much more natural.
As primarily a goalkeeper during my brief stint on a youth soccer camp, I was especially interested in goalkeeping drills. They don’t disappoint. The shots come from a combination of “shooting cannons” created by Rezzil (small elements that can be placed anywhere on the field and programmed to shoot balls at various speeds and spin rates) and real 3D representations of the Premier League players. League, which appear on the field. in various places such as the penalty spot and longer free kicks.