Our look at the Star Wars hyper reality experience (A Virtual NoPro Adventure)

To say I’ve been anticipating going to The VOID — the location based “hyperreality” attraction — would be an understatement.

As engaging as at-home virtual reality has been at points — I still love apps like Mindshow and stories like Dispatch — the dream of a seamless VR set-up that lets users lose themselves completely in the world has been elusive.

VR systems have been hampered by the ways in which they are tethered to computing interfaces. Controllers and pointers keep the relationship to the virtual world at a distance: abstracted by the technical limitations. For games on a screen that’s fine, and at first I thought it would be fine for VR as well. The longer I spend in embodied experiences — digital and physical — the more my tolerance for artificial interfaces shrinks.

Unveiled back in 2015, The VOID is a Utah based company that promised to mix virtual reality technology and illusion in order to create VR experiences that one could touch. The VOID’s innovation of creating a physical stage that could be “reskinned” with a digital layer was a big step towards the realization of the dream of the Holodeck.

If all that The VOID did to improve the current state of VR was give us our hands and things to touch, that would be enough to reset the clock on the introduction of the medium to the mainstream.

But The VOID is doing a lot more, and it’s doing it in a galaxy far, far away…

This wasn’t supposed to be our mission. It was supposed to be Cassian Andor’s. Alliance Intelligence caught whiff of something big — the Empire’s pretty melodramatic so there’s always something big — and was going to send Cassian. Only things went sideways. They seem to do that a lot around here. If this Rebellion can’t find a little luck soon there isn’t gonna be anyone left to stand up to the bucketheads.

That’s where my crew comes in. Doing the dirty work that no one else wants. Which is how we ended up on this stolen Imp cargo hauled headed Hutt-knows-where. I just hope that if this is the time our luck runs out, that it was worth it.

Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire is The VOID’s second publicly shared installation, and their first collaboration with ILMxLab, the Academy Award winning innovation team who fallen to have the keys to… well, you know. Star Wars.

The scenario in Secrets is pretty straightforward: Alliance Intelligence has gotten word of some kind of superweapon being moved by the Empire and your team of four operatives is tasked with the job of finding out just what that is.

To do so, you’re going to have to disguise yourselves as Stormtroopers and infiltrate whatever Imperial facility it’s being taken to. Get in, get the intel, get out. No biggie.

Naturally, all hell breaks loose.

That’s the simple story in a nutshell, but what sets Secrets of the Empire apart from all other virtual reality experiences is the execution. The Sith is in the details, as it were.

Gearing up to enter Secrets of the Empire involves getting strapped into a haptic vest and helmet which are hanging on counterweighted hooks just outside of the play stage. The initial donning of the outfit is simple enough — buckle this, pull that — it’s only once the counterweight is released that you realize you’ve put on a stone’s worth of computing gear. It’s heavy, but balanced, and provides a literal weight to what’s to come. My first reaction upon the counterweight being disengaged was “Oh.” I found it oddly reassuring.

Get Noah J Nelson’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

SubscribeSubscribe

After scanning in our wristbands and synching them to our gear, our squad of four — I played with strangers, more on that in a minute — was led by an attendant to the loading dock. Three gray walls awaited, one with a sealed, sliding door. There he gave us permission to lower our visors, but not before instructing us that the first thing we should do is raise our hands.

I did: and there they were. My hands. Albeit clad in a video game version of Stormtrooper armor. Fully articulated, with the middle fingers capable of the most fundamental of expressions even within a Disney branded experience. The others were there with me, each clad in their own Stormtrooper armor. With our mics tapped into each other I suggested we shake hands. That didn’t work out so well, which could have been the gear or could have been the other players. Since we weren’t buddies, the incentive to connect wasn’t really there.

After giving us some time to adjust to our new digital selves the door in the wall opened and K-2SO (still played by Alan Tuyduk) appeared just beyond, becoming us to step on-board the stolen shuttle.

I stepped forward, reached out for the doorframe, and made contact. There it was: in the digital and physical world at the same time. A one-to-one correspondence. I was touching a video game. I was inside Star Wars. Three decades of dreaming of this moment all boiled down to something as simple as putting my hand on a doorframe: the kind of thing I take for granted in the real world.

K-2SO told us to sit, and we did, a bench right where it was on our visors. The screen, which has the field of view of an Oculus Rift more or less, had fully taken over that part of our senses.

The adventure that follows is quick, maybe a little too quick for those of us who have been anticipating bodily escaping to the Star Wars galaxy, but as a demonstration of what The VOID has to offer it is a kind of revelation.

Reach out for a switch, and it’s there. Find yourself on a ledge with a railing, and you can lean against it as you blast Stormtroopers into a fiery abyss. Extremes of temperature emerge at appropriate moments, and above all else the sense of presence is reinforced every literal step of the way.

There are, naturally, limitations to the technology. That field of view I mentioned is still far below what would be preferable for a seamless immersion. A need to be able to reset the deck for new experiences mean the harnesses aren’t customized to the setting. These limitations pale, however, in comparison to the simple joy of being inside a beloved fantasy world. Not watching. Not playing. Living in it, if only for a shining moment.

I’d also recommending heading to Secrets of the Empire with a group of friends. While the majority of the ad hoc party we had were fairly chill (if inept with a blaster), one guy kinda freaked me out when he looked down at his entrance wristband and muttered “just like I’m back in the hospital” to himself. This after taking time in line to read everyone’s t-shirts outloud. He didn’t wind up doing anything, but that behavior definitely put me on alert. Not that that sort of thing is any different from what you might encounter at a movie theatre. (I’m just extraordinarily unlucky with humanity as a whole. It’s why I spend so much time with theatre people.)

Two other things are remarkable about The VOID experience as it stands now.

First off, the company can put four teams of four onto the stage deck — the one at Downtown Disney in Anaheim takes up about two storefronts worth of space — at a time. That means they can run enough people through to theoretically be profitable. Unlike an escape room or a theatrical experience, once it comes time to reset, all they’ll have to do is rearrange some basic fixtures that no customer sees and download the new experience.

The second thing is truly great: The VOID is wheelchair accessible. This is a big deal, given the limitations of live immersive when it comes to accessibility. Many small companies, operating just above the radar, don’t have the budgets or infrastructure in place to provide full accessibility. The VOID, which is clearly aimed at a broad market and has financial ties to one of the largest entertainment companies on Earth, clearly has the mandate to make their work available to as many people as possible. They go so far as to have their staff train on both sides of the accessible experience, so that they know close to first hand what it is like to be guided through the space while using a different mode of mobility.

This kind of care and attention to detail is heartening to see. As one who believes that immersive is meant for all, I’m so very glad to see a pioneering company answer the call in such a clear fashion.

As I left Secrets of the Empire that afternoon a family of four was strolling by. One of the kids asked their dad what the place was. He said he thought it might be a VR thing. I stopped, turned, and said to the father: “You know the VR they promised us when we were kids?”

I smiled, pointed to The VOID, and stepped away.

Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire is currently open in three locations: Anaheim, Orlando, and London with additional locations planned. Tickets are $29.95/£30 per person.

No Proscenium is a labor of love made possible by our generous backers like you: join them on Patreon today.

In addition to the No Proscenium web site, our podcast, and our newsletters, you can find NoPro on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, in our online community Everything Immersive, and in our Slack forum.