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How DayZ dev Dean Hall helped design Everest VR

We had a chat with Thor Gunnarson about how Everest VR is coming along.

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Everest VR is a game that lets you explore the sheer heights and beautiful sights of Mount Everest, all in VR. At Slush Play in Iceland, we got the opportunity to chat with Thor Gunnarson, the co-founder of the company developing Everest VR, Sólfar Studios.

In order to make this 'game' as realistic as possible, Solfar teamed up with RVX, a visual effects company in order to make the experience as realistic as possible. As the team didn't have anyone who'd actually been on Everest, they looked to Dean Hall, of DayZ fame. "He's the only game designer I know who's been on Everest, so he gave us a bunch of great bits of advice," Gunnarson told us. "We also reached out to a few other Everest climbers, and got them to look at works-in-progress."

All the effort the team seems to be doing to get the experience as realistic as possible seems to be paying off, too. "The visual sense of presence and immersion, even for people that have been on Everest, is working for them." Gunnarson said. "It's been a really gratifying point of feedback from people who have actually been there."

Everest VR has recently had a new feature called 'God Mode' implemented, which lets you see a view from above of the Himalayas, zooming in and seeing many different climbing routes and actually being able to see climbers on the mountains. "We're on a pretty cool update path for Everest throughout autumn and into winter," Gunnarson told us. "We're going to be expanding god mode even further, showing further climbing routes. We're also hard at work on a new first-person sequence, called Lhotse Face, which is one of the famous very vertical climbs you do between camp three and four."

There's lots to look forward to with Everest VR for Vive users in terms of updates, but Oculus or PSVR users shouldn't count themselves out just yet. "We're hard at work on the Playstation VR version of Everest, as well as the Oculus Rift version." Gunnarson said. "Those will both be shipping before the end of the year.

Everest VR is available now on Steam for HTC Vive users, but as previously mentioned PSVR and Oculus versions are on their way. Check out the full interview below, where Gunnarson spoke in much further detail about Everest VR.

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Everest VR

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