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Games

The Greatest Immersive Video Game Simulator Ever Built

The Gadget Show transform their studio into a virtual battlefield.

In the UK there’s not a huge amount of gadget shows on TV for the discerning geek. You may wonder why we’re even watching such an archaic medium as television when we can have our pick online, and you’ll find your answer in the video above from The Gadget Show. Would you get a bespoke immersive gaming simulator from your average user-generated geek show? Didn’t think so.

The Gadget Show is run by some hardcore gaming nerds for whom simply hooking up their console to the latest giant flatscreen with surround sound wasn’t enough. Instead, they went about building themselves the greatest FPS video game simulator in the entire history of everything.

On last Monday’s show they amassed a wealth of technology (£500,000 worth, to be precise) to build a unique environment for playing Battlefield 3 in a way that would be far more physically demanding and realistic than your typical gaming session. The kit included an omni-directional treadmill, a wireless gun system, ambient LED lighting, 12 paintball markers, a hacked Kinect (had to be in there somewhere), a 360-degree, 4 metre high and 9 metre wide video dome, and ten infra-red motion tracking cameras.

From this heady mix they concocted a gaming environment that even the most sarcastic and jaded gamer would be impressed with. The infra-red cameras monitor the player in real-time and this information is used to control the speed and direction of the character in the game, while the paintball markers let the player feel the enemy gunfire raining down on them. No doubt the whole setup would look great in your living room.

The 17 minute clip above shows how they did it.