[From Polygon, where the story includes the 5:58 minute demonstration video mentioned at the end along with a 3:45 minute video review of the “South Park: The Stick of Truth” game]
Oculus Rift experiment lets you become a citizen of South Park
By Jenna Pitcher on Jul 03, 2014
Oculus Rift users can now walk around as a citizen in a recreation of animation series South Park thanks to a virtual reality project developed by production company Tool.
“We started with three goals in mind for the experiment,” Tool’s explanation reads. “One, from a tech point of view, to sharpen our Unity and Oculus Rift development skills-two, from a creative point of view, to reimagine a well known story by allowing the user to experience it in the first person and-three, to finish the project in time to share with our friends at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival.”
Besides being fans of the show, the team chose the world of South Park for its Oculus project because of its simplicity and [because] it offered a “free world experience.” Tool’s rendition of South Park was inspired by Obsidian Entertainment’s role-playing game South Park: The Stick of Truth and the season 17 show intro, where they “felt that a combination of flat cutout characters and more dimensional paper-textured buildings was the way to go.”
Created using Unity, Cinema 4D, Photoshop and SP-Studio, the buildings and environmental objects are paper-textured 3D structures. The well-known characters that populate the world are 2D cut-out objects which turn based on the user’s movements within the environment. Additional scenes, a product of an experiment “to push the limits of the Oculus Rift,” are included as [an] Easter Egg located in South Park’s church.
It is free to download for Windows PC and Mac from the official website where you can also learn more details about its development process. You [can] watch the Tool’s South Park VR experience in action in the video by YouTube user emart.