Designers Christin Marczinzik and Thi Binh Minh Nguyen take the playground swing set to a whole new level with this immersive virtual reality swing installation.
Growing up as kids, many of us can remember the school or local park swing where you would spend the afternoon swinging back and forth pretending you were flying or seeing who could fly the highest. Engineering and design team Christin Marczinzik and Thi Binh Minh Nguyen is bringing new heights to reality with their Oculus Rift experience.
Swing is a virtual reality experience with the Oculus Rift DK2 and Kinect SDK 2.0 that uses the swing as a physical input device. This creative combination offers the user a rhythmic motion experience within the head mounted display. Once you swing yourself up to a “cruising speed,” the program adjusts to your motion and times a visual experience of flying through crowds. With the sensation of weightlessness and the momentum of the swing, the experience mimics the illusion of flying.
Additional experiences include flying through space, past galaxies and solar systems deep into our universe. We here at VRScout have started to see other swing like or bungee type experiences integrated with virtual reality headsets pop up on YouTube and expect this swing experience to continue catching on.
The swing brings a natural sense of motion and flight that can add a strong tangible element to virtual reality that is often missing.
Swing’s creators developed it as part of their studies at Burg Glebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle, under the guidance of professor Bernd Hanisch. If you’d like to see more from Marczinzik or Nguyen, explore their websites to see what they develop next.
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