“Urban VR”: Experience the Thrill of Graffitiing the Streets of New York in Virtual Reality

Urban VR, an immersive virtual reality game to dive into the New York of the Velvet underground, should delight graffiti enthusiasts and pros alike. Created by a company from Nancy, it should arrive on the platforms during the month of April 2023.

Once the virtual reality helmet is on the head, the graffiti artist Valer seems like a fish in water, it plays the bomb on the walls and even on the subway of New York, “it is fun“. Valer is a recognized artist and that day, he tested “Urban VR”, an immersive game imagined and created by the Nancy company Human Games

“It’s very close to reality, it’s fun. Once you’re there, you’re really absorbed”, explains Valer. “There are several advantages: unlimited bombs and no gas nuisance, so no mask. On the other hand, as in reality, the graffiti is final. If I don’t like it, I have to supergraft. I can’t erase.“

Le New York du Velvet underground

For the creators of the game, Marti Di Stefano and Deise Mikhail, it was a no-brainer. “If we walk in New York, we think of the Velvet underground“, tells us Deise Mikhail. “We think of Basquiat. We imagine the music of Lou Reed. In fact, it is this period when all the arts are mixed. Hip-hop was making its debut. People who do graffiti, music, all forms of artistic expression, started to mix at that time. Le Velvet undergroundit really is New York’s magic time.”

Moreover, the game offers a music list with titles to listen to in the background. For an even more believable immersion, the sounds of New York are very present throughout the game, sirens, crowds in the distance. You may even see a helicopter pass overhead. To guide you, there is Smoky, a nice and very affectionate little dog.

Pour Deise Mikhail: “The interest of virtual reality is to go beyond reality. The idea is to do those things that you can’t do in real life. He’s a form of augmented human.“The player has tools for climbing or scaling walls. The color palette is unlimited and immediately available at his fingertips.”He can paint anywhere, on a police car, on a metro car, that’s still the foot. And it’s guaranteed pollution-free.“

One can easily imagine a neophyte graffiti artist embarking on the adventure. But Marti Di Stefano and Deise Mikhail assure you, they have worked with graffiti artists who have the street as their playground and for them, it’s one more universe to invest. Urban art would therefore evolve with the times. “Thanks to technology, blunderers can also publish their works in a virtual gallery and share them on social networks“, explains Marti Di Stefano.

The real tour de force of Urban VR is interactivity. The player can move freely in a complex universe while remaining in a space that he will have previously determined with the help of his helmet and his sensors.

It interacts with its environment. He can grab a basketball and make a basket or stroke Smoky. Marti Di Stefano worked on the “game design”. “There were features that I thought were essential, including being able to see the rendering immediately without exiting the game. We also worked a lot on the “caps” to have the feeling of a real bomb, its inclination and its pressure. We met street artists to understand and propose the best ergonomics to the project.“

The ergonomics, the handling of the game were not an easy task. But it is a whole universe that must be created. “A whole city had to be built. For this, we worked with our two developers Nathan and Nathan“. Behind everything, every object that moves, every opportunity to evolve in the game, there are lines of code. For the magic to work, you need magicians.

Besides being a form of metaverse, Urban VR can be used in an “augmented reality” version. Clearly, you can superimpose a virtual world on the real world and graffiti on real walls of works that you can save digitally and publish on the networks. But the wall will remain intact in reality. Graffiti can quickly become an activity without constraint and without risk for those who wish it. Urban VR will no doubt also evolve over time to take into account the expectations of professionals and amateurs.

The Human Games team has specialized in virtual worlds for more than ten years. In particular, it develops virtual reality tools for large French and foreign companies on the subject of training in particular.

The “Urban VR” game should be available during the month of April 2023