This was one hell of a ride! We had one month to complete this project and it was hard to imagine it would be possible…but we made it!

We were able to present this unique project to the Sapo Codebits audience and it was big! A huge success. People were amazed with the experience and they really felt what it is to be inside the world of Tron. Thank you to everyone who tried it and gave us their thoughts and opinions!

We add a very good coverage by the national and international media. Can you believe that Gizmodo, Cnet, Bgamer and TekSapo wrote about the Riftcycles? You can find all media coverage in the press page - http://thearcademan.net/press-2014

We are now planning some new stuff, but the bar is set much higher it will not be easy…

I leave you with some pictures and videos of the RiftCycles@ Sapo Codebits 2014. Stay tunned for the next projects

“The Grid. HA digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships? motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see. And then, one day…I got in!” Kevin Flynn - TRON: Legacy (2010)

Never, like today, this Kevin Flynn words in the Tron:Legacy movie made so much sense. The evolution of tecnology allowed us to have amazing experiences. How many of us dreamed of being inside a game, this is a fantasy in the mind of all the nerdiest geeks.

Thanks to an amazing little device that allows us to be “inside a game” and the project I’ve developed in the last month, I think I can say that we are in a very good way to materialize a great part of Kevin Flynn’s dream…

I present you the RiftCycles Project.

This is a stunning and unique arcade prototype that combines the Oculus Rift with a Light Cycles simulator  that I built from scratch.

The game was developed (using Unity) by the portuguese startup Overflow Interactive and it’s a game based on the Light Cycle Battle from the Tron universe and fully compatible with the Oculus Rift.

In this project the players experience the feeling of being inside the Tron world and enjoy a immersive virtual reality light cycle battle,  fighting in an arena  with their bikes until “deresolution”.

Once more I was invited  to attend Sapo Codebits, the geek event of the year that in the course of 3 days brings together 900 people in a non-stop tech and a 48-hour programming competition. Last year, I launched the Sega Rally with RC Cars (together with Artica) project and built 10 arcades with Raspberry Pi on a 15hz monitor, these projects were a huge success and had very good media coverage, so it made sense to be there again.

I’m really excited with this “new” experience and  the next ideas that may come up in the near future… and guys, stay tunned during the days of the event, I will show you how people are experiencing this new arcade prototype with fotos, videos and some other stuff.

Finally, I would like to thanks Sapo Codebits, Lisbon Games Week, Overflow Interactive, António Ferreira and My Brother Joel Sobral, without them it would have not been possible to make this project…in a month xD