Oculus Rift Takes Center Stage at Comic-Con

While you can read about how your favorite characters solved a crisis or watch a movie about a doomsday scenario, there's still something to be said about going through the heart-stopping action for yourself. Thanks to virtual reality technology Oculus Rift, some San Diego Comic-Con attendees were able to do just that. Oculus Rift made headlines when Facebook bought the parent company Oculus VR for $2 billion in March, to the dismay of several fans and developers. Not only does the technology submerse the user into the story through audio cues and vibrant visuals, its motion sensors allow for a 360-degree peek into the fictitious world. Despite usually being reserved for video games, several brands used the headset to give fans an experiential tour of their product. X-Men Days of Future Past turned Oculus Rift into Cerebro, the famed device Professor X uses (along with his telepathic powers) to locate mutants. Attendees sat in Charles Xavier's wheelchair and used their mind power to navigate the convention floor to find shape-shifting mutant Mystique. The participants ran into other iconic X-Men characters along the way, including Wolverine and Nightcrawler. Fox brought Oculus Rift to the Petco Interactive Zone right outside the main convention center, and allowed people to meet Ichabod Crane as a promotion for its series Sleepy Hollow. If all went well, the user's head was chopped off during the experience, and they were sent home in real life with a nice CGI photo of their head lying on the ground. Warner Brothers used Oculus Rift to promote its upcoming movie, Into the Storm. In its scenario, the wearer was stuck in a storm drain during severe weather as debris flew at them and vehicles exploded nearby. Fans and vibrating seats helped make the experience even more convincing. Pacific Rim's Oculus Rift experience let people pilot a jaeger, a 250-story fighting robot that has to be powered using the neural powers of two human pilots. (Don't ask: It makes sense in the Guillermo del Toro movie.) Brave users then had to fight a kaiju, a destructive reptilian creature that emerges from the center of the earth. (Again, don't ask.)

Performance Marketing

Oculus Rift Takes Center Stage at Comic-Con

Fantasy-based virtual reality

Michelle Castillo

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Michelle Castillo