Visit VR South Park with Oculus Rift or your browser
A virtual version of South Park may be as close as fans will ever get to visiting the fictional town and interacting with its cheeky residents.
Leave your woes behind. Cartman, Kenny, Chef, Butters, and the rest of the gang are waiting to hang out with you inside a virtual South Park. Production company Tool happens to have a lot of "South Park" fans on the team. They chose to re-create the animated town in an effort to hone their Unity (a cross-platform game engine) and Oculus Rift development skills while also paying homage to the rowdy television series.
VR South Park can be explored through your Web browser or downloaded for use with an Oculus Rift VR headset if you really want to feel like you've been transported inside your TV set.
I don't have an Oculus Rift, so I gave the browser version a try. You navigate with your mouse and directional keys. I made it around the town and heard sound clips from quite a few characters before motion sickness caught up with me and I had to give it a break. I can imagine it would be a lot of fun in the immersive Oculus Rift world, with no outside distractions.
The South Park world looks great. It has all the bright colors and familiar locations like City Sushi and Tom's Rhinoplasty. Tool based the designs on locations from the game Stick of Truth and the show intro from the 17th season. The impressive project was pulled off in only a few short weeks.
Oculus Rift users can get an extra thrill by walking through the church doors and falling into hell where the "South Park" rendition of Saddam Hussein awaits. Also, try standing in the path of the school bus and you'll get to see it swooping through you like you're invisible.
You can tell this project is a labor of love. The Tool team waxes a bit poetic about the process, writing, "We loved this doodle of an experiment. Every aspect of the project gave us amusement: Recalling and reminiscing on favorite moments in the show's history, going through our long forgotten DVD sets (yes some of us still have optical drives) to research these moments, modeling the buildings, setting the environment, and creating our own avatars. Our hope is that you enjoy exploring and rediscovering your love for this amazing show as much as we did creating."
(Via SlashGear)