Virtual reality, also known as VR is making waves in the industry and it was only a matter of time before two keen Hamilton-based VR fans were going to share their passion and create a business out of it.

Husband and wife team, Frikkie and Gretta Rodriguez-Fleming had their first VR experience in Auckland last year, but Hamilton is the location they  believe is best suited for opening a VR arcade.

Frikkie and Gretta’s VR arcade vision, has come to life in the form of VREX, located in the Hamilton CBD, on Anglesea Street.

VREX is the first of its kind in the Waikato and has many different games and experiences on offer.

The titles include, but are not limited to Beat Saber, Arizona Sunshine, and Google Earth.

Gretta shared that she has had memorable experiences from the games in VREX’s library.

“Beat Saber would definitely be one of them. It’s like musical timing, that type of thing.”

“We have Creed coming out. That’s a cool one where you get to train with Sylvester Stallone’s character in Rocky and actually get to do a proper fight. It’s got cinematic graphics, so it feels like it’s not just what you’re doing. The background graphics do heaps to amplify the experience as well.”

Gretta admitted that she wasn’t an avid gamer, that’s her husband’s area of expertise.

At the age of 12, Frikkie received his first computer and his interest in gaming only grew from there.

“I remember rushing home from school to play Counter Strike.”

Frikkie studied mechanical engineering then applied the skills he learnt to an industry he loves and custom built all of the PCs specifically for VR gaming.

Both directors were rather new to the world of VR, having less than a handful of experiences between them before deciding to open the arcade.

Being invited to get a behind the scenes look at the business before it opened was quite the experience.

Scattered around were the obvious signs of setting up with signs still boxed on the floor and not yet lit up on the wall where they would eventually find themselves.

The directors were proud of their state of the art technology that they have installed in every one of their booths.

“What we use is the HTC Vive which is over $1000 just for the headset. With the games that you can play on it, it creates the first of its kind for consumer technology and really immersive experiences.”

The official launch of VREX went very well with individuals and families alike all taking the time to try out virtual reality.

There was a constant stream of all kinds of people filing through the doors to get their hands on the VR technology.

A welcome surprise for a small business without large signs, instead relying on their social media and word of mouth to get noticed.

The directors poured all their finances into getting the technology and the business started, which given the turnout seemed to be a beneficial decision.

Enlarge

The sound of joy was prevalent from the moment anyone entered the virtual world, regardless of the experience they were having.

On the bottom floor, a teenager named Arlin Waireti was trying out a game with his mum watching on.

Waireti was one of the few people that had experienced virtual reality before. He had gone on a virtual roller coaster ride.

“It’s amazing how far technology has come. Back then you could only look around and now there were things everywhere and you can interact with them.”

He said he found the experience “extremely exciting” and got into it while his mum was happy that he wasn’t yelling or swearing at the game, as most gamers are prone to do on their own devices.

Kara Marsh frequently switched through different games trying to give them all a go.

The games offered provided different levels of intensity. There were some where you simply use your arms to aim and shoot, and then there was Creed.

Creed is based on the boxing movie of the same name and as such gave a much more intense experience as some of the patrons found out.

Scott Burrows tried out the game without realising how much work it was going to be.

Through the curtains everyone could see him swinging his arms wildly, ducking virtual enemies working up a sweat.

He even suggested that he would “cancel my gym membership and just come here for half an hour”.

A lot of the people at the opening day said that they weren’t gamers, but they wanted to see what virtual reality was like.

Something that most visitors had in common was that they had such a good time that they immediately began planning when they could come again, and when they could bring their friends and families.

Virtual Reality Experience is an aptly named business as it is the experience that gets people to come back.

The VR booths are set up with space for the individual to move around without colliding with anything and with the PC’s running the games visible for people to watch what they see.

VR is designed to pull you out of the real world and let you experience something unique.

Unique is exactly what we got from our first experiences.

VR gaming has a period of time where you need to adapt to the feeling. The feeling of being in another world and no longer having any idea of your real world surroundings.

The beginning of the game was simple to adapt to, with the majority of the early stages being tutorial and learning how to walk around.

Rachel experienced the perfect example of losing yourself in the game when she found herself surrounded by darkness.

Onlookers tried to help but she could not hear them over the screams of the zombies in her ear, blood splatters appeared and she finally realised where she was.

Rachel finally turned out of the corner she had been lost in, just in time to see the glaring words, “Game Over”.

Regardless of your experience of playing video games, VR is something different that you can not expect to just be good at immediately.

Lucas claims that he plays an “obscenely excessive amount of games”, so experience was most definitely on his side when he stepped in to fight the zombie hordes.

The zombies weren’t a problem, but moving around the game had real world effects on Lucas.

The action made him turn constantly and move around, so it was a shock when he stood still with his hands in the air.

The cord attached to the VR headset had become wrapped around his neck.

While an unlikely incident that has, to the best of our knowledge, not been repeated, it does remind the user not to get too lost in the virtual world.

Gaming is not the only thing offered in the virtual world. We found out that one thing that drew a lot of people to the virtual world was feeling homesick.

One of the experiences in the virtual world, and surprisingly one of the most popular was Google Earth.

Google Earth in VR works in much the same way as the website feature, where you can look at anywhere in the mapped world and even go into street view to see things as they appear in the real world.

This feature let people visit their hometowns and countries.A perfect chance for Frikkie; one of the directors, to visit his homeland of South Africa.

Another option that people took advantage of was the ability to jump from place to place immediately.

This saw people standing beneath the Eiffel Tower one second and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge the next.

No two experiences in the virtual world will ever be the same.

Every single person has a unique, once in a lifetime experience every time they strap on the headset.