It may seem like we’re living in the future when late night TV hosts are playing virtual reality games to pass the time, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Perennial goofster Jimmy Fallon, operating an HTC Vive to show off its functionality, played a game of VR pictionary using the ever-versatile Google TiltBrush.
TiltBrush was one of the original games that was given away with the HTC Vive VR headset, and it continues to be a popular choice among gamers and artists alike for the freedom it gives to produce all sorts of wonderful creations. It can also let you draw hard-to-interpret snake charmers, but despite the stick-figure nature of Fallon’s artistic expression, his guests were able to guess his intention all the same.
This is one feature that fans of the shows may well become used to in the future, too, if the high-quality living-room set that the Tonight Show prepared for the segment is any indication. We’ll have to see if VR Pictionary becomes a regular feature on the show.
This sort of game is one that many VR users have played since the HTC Vive was released back in April. Although several games have been built for a party-like environment, where one person dons the headset and others watch, Pictionary-style play in TiltBrush is one that has been used by many a VR host.
As RoadtoVR points out, the unofficial game mode was so popular that TiltBrush developers ended up adding their own spin on the game type, called Tiltasaurus. To play, one person in VR is shown a word that the people in the real world cannot see. It is then that player’s task to draw what the word describes, while the other players guess the word.
The winner takes over the headset, making it a solid little party experience. As Fallon showed with this segment though, with something as freeform as Tiltbrush, you can make up your own games, and all you need is a little imagination. More imagination that writing dirty words in blue light, but that’s about the first thing we all did when we donned the headset for the first time.
This wasn’t Fallon’s first go with a VR headset. He debuted a pre-production and pre-development kit version of the Oculus Rift back in 2013, so he’s been riding the virtual reality hype train for longer than most.
