The Hobbit has spawned a virtual reality experience created by Weta Digital and powered by Unreal Engine 4, Oculus and Nvidia’s newly unveiled top-end GPU the Titan X.
Thief in the Shadows sees gamers wading through coins, passing between stacks of gold ingots and exploring subterranean crevices, all under the guard of Smaug the dragon. Benedict Cumberbatch also returns to voice Smaug.
Weta Digital, the team behind the Hobbit movies, created Thief in the Shadows exclusively for Oculus’s new Crescent Bay and takes advantage of the GeForce Titan X to create a smooth 90 frames per second experience.
“When you come face-to-face with an enormous dragon that experience has to be believable, visceral and emotional,” said Alasdair Coull, head of R&D at Weta Digital. “NVIDIA’s new TITAN X GPUs provide the platform to deliver exactly that.”
Thief in the Shadows also utilises spatial audio effects thanks to the Oculus Audio SDK.
Given that the demo runs on a GPU that costs more than twice that of a PS4 you have to wonder how Sony’s Project Morpheus will hold up to high-end VR experiences on PCs.
Source: Nvidia
