Oculus has launched the ‘Fall In Love’ VR experiment for the Rift headset and plans to launch the experience on the Gear VR next week at some point, giving users a unique first-person conversation experience that aims to see if it’s possible to fall in love in virtual reality. The project was inspired by a New York Times Best-Selling piece called The 36 Questions That Lead To Love, and seeks to give people the opportunity to ask these questions in a virtual reality setting. Users start by choosing an actor they would want to fall in love with, then continue by asking a series of specific questions that will garner voice-driven responses from the chosen actor.
The idea behind the whole thing is realism, letting users feel as if they were actually talking with another person in the same room as themselves as they ask these questions. The app uses voice recognition software to capture the questions asked by the user, and responses are said to be timed in such a way that it feels as natural as possible and more immersive as if everything was happening in real life.
The entire experience takes about ten minutes to get through which is fairly short, but as there are multiple actors a user could decide to go through the experience again with another person to see the different responses. Questions start out easy and basic, but as the questions continue they get more and more personal in an attempt to help the user “foster a human connection.” The actors that people can interact with in this experience are not computer generated or avatars, and the entire set of people you can ask questions to includes five different people in total – two women and three men, including Grace Van Dien, Ramon Rodriguez, Logan Huffman, Wole Park, and Maya Donovan. According to the director of the experiment, Kevin Cornish, they had each person sit across from their significant others when facing the cameras and being asked all these personal questions, so that they could make each person feel comfortable and get as natural of a response as possible. This was so that when users ask the questions during the experience, they will be getting real answers that are filled with vulnerability and emotion to make the experience feel much more real. Fall In Love is a free download for those that are interested and it’s already available on the Oculus Store.
Download Fall In Love