Virtual Reality meets Simplicity and Lightweight!
Virtual Reality is all the rage lately and the Electronics and Entertainment Expo is no different. All the top companies have their sights set on virtual reality and how they can change the game! In order to stand out, you need to do something special or different and the Pico Neo, in my opinion, stands out!
The Pico Neo stands out in the crowd because it’s an orange Virtual Reality headset. Aside from the color, the Pico Neo wants you to enjoy the experience. Most of the Virtual Reality headsets going around cause a bad case of motion sickness. The Pico Neo didn’t give me any discomfort or bouts of nausea. The VR boom will have to try to come up with a way to combat motion sickness before it can really take off.
The headset is lightweight and very comfortable. It isn’t bulky and it didn’t feel like you had a deep sea divers mask on your head. Some of the cheap headsets disort the image while you’re playing a game or looking at a movie but the Pico Neo didn’t have the image problems I’ve had in the past with headsets. In fact, while I was playing with it, moving around was very smooth.
To continue on about the gameplay, I was playing a demo of a space shooter where you sat in the cockpit. During gameplay you had to look for the enemy ships and shoot them down. The game played like Galaga where it was key to locate the ships and discover the flight pattern. Like I mentioned before, while looking for enemy ships, that could come from just about anywhere, there was no image distortion or double vision. I feel that the image problems are the reason why some people get sick while playing.
The controller looks and feels like a Super Nintendo controller and it plays into the simple is best mantra the Pico Neo is going for. The Galaga-like game I played is another example of that too. All you had to do in the game was look for the enemy ships, line up the cross hairs, and hold the A button to shoot. In an era where companies are going away from simplicity, it could be just what the doctor ordered for the Pico Neo.
The Pico Neo is lightweight and comfortable and you’ll find yourself wanting to play it for a long time. During my demo I didn’t want to stop playing because I was having a good time with the game I was playing. It also didn’t feel like I had a helmet on my head, it felt like something comfortable!
It will be interesting to see games that require you to move your head/vision more and how that relates to motion sickness problems. It would be really cool to be playing quarterback for the Jets, lining up a pass in Virtual Reality, and not have the image problems like other headsets do. If the Pico Neo can keep the good times rolling from experiences like this, there will be no stopping it!
