Walk around your favourite games in VR, using photo mode

As much as virtual reality has a lot of cool content on offer for early adopters to play, there are still a lot of games and environments we'd love to experience in VR. If you feel like being creative with a bit of photogrammetary software though, it turns out you can use in-game photo modes from some games to create your very own AAA VR environments.

Photogrammetry might traditionally be used for surveying purposes, but it can also be used to create stunning looking virtual environments, by stitching together a large number of images. In-fact, if you have enough of them, you can use specialised software to make highly detailed recreations scenes from your favourite games.

Take the case of Uncharted 4, which has a very detailed photo mode. Youtuber and VR fan, Let's Read About It, used a particular scene from the game and after taking tens of images of the room, was able to create a very nice looking VR environment with tessellated brick walls and everything. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW3Vj2UMYzs']

Of course it isn't an interactive room. The doors will never open and stepping outside will leave you staring into blackness, but it's interesting to see what might be possible with some games. In-fact, you have to wonder if a script could be made to automate the image capturing, if that would allow for an expansive visual recreation of many games within virtual reality.

Indeed this doesn't have to be restricted to game worlds. The real world too can utilise photogrammetry to trick our minds into thinking we're somewhere we're not. That's what Valve used for its The Lab demonstrations, whereby you teleport to different parts of the world. [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8FPunc_RTE']

Realities.io has also been using this technique to create unbelievably life-like renditions of real world locations too, so we wouldn't be surprised if we saw more of this technique in the future.

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KitGuru Says: Admittedly whole worlds created like this would likely feel rather dead without physics or interactivity of any sort, but for vistas and quick looks at characters or particular scenes, it's a clever effect.

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