Cambridge, UK – May 10 ^th 2016 - Ninja Theory Ltd, the UK-based videogame developer has today released their first VR scene to the public in order to demonstrate the potential of Virtual Human technology in VR. The scene, based on the studio’s upcoming game Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, is available to view as a stereoscopic 360° video on YouTube, Facebook and through Oculus devices.

At Games Developer Conference 16, Ninja Theory showcased a virtual human demonstration in partnership with Epic Games, Cubic Motion & 3Lateral.  In a world-first, a scene from their upcoming game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, was performed by an actress live on stage and rendered in the game world in real-time. The studio have today released the same scene in VR.

“We tested the scene in VR and found that people reacted very strongly to seeing someone they perceive as human”, said Tameem Antoniades, Chief Creative Ninja at Ninja Theory, “Our belief is that real-time virtual human technology will profoundly shape future VR experiences for games, movies and beyond.”

Wil Driver, CTO at Ninja Theory added, “In VR, you expect characters to acknowledge your presence in meaningful and natural ways and respond to your actions.  In the real-time version of the scene, Senua tracks and follows your eyes procedurally while still playing a captured performance.  In future, we believe a mix of live performance capture, procedural animation systems and AI will profoundly change the way we both create and enjoy VR experiences.”

Ninja Theory plan to continue their work with Virtual Human Technology in partnership with Cubic Motion and 3Lateral to explore the possibilities that real-time performance capture and virtual human interaction will bring to VR experiences.

The Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice 360° video can be seen on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/Kz2xpeGkcRU

The 360° video can also be viewed in VR with the Google Cardboard viewer via the YouTube Mobile App and with Oculus devices.

Ninja Theory are open to exciting opportunities in the VR space. Business enquiries can be made to Ninja Theory at [email protected] .

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