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Experience life as a rugby player with an Oculus Rift, nine GoPros and zero bruises

The Oculus Rift's impact on gaming is obvious, but it's not hard to imagine how the virtual reality headset could change how we consume home entertainment as a whole. UK mobile network O2 and the England rugby team know this, and have collaborated to create an immersive experience to prove it. Recorded using nine GoPro Hero 3 cameras on a custom gimbal, the footage sees you on the training pitch with the team, where you get stuck right in the middle of the action, and burpee along, right next to the players. While this is mostly part of a broader promotion for the sport's six-nations tournament in Europe, you can bet your bottom 100 cents that we're going to see a lot more of these "experiences" going forward. We're getting the hairdryer out for the inevitable skydive one already.

Update: Since this report was published, we've actually been able to experience the video for ourselves. We've seen a few videos ported over to the platform, but this was by far the best quality, and most troublingly immersive. As we stood in a busy office laden with headset and headphones, we were acutely aware of the contrast between our real surroundings, and that which was reaching our primary senses. At one point, as one of the rugby players passed us the ball, it took everything within our power not to reach out and try to catch it. Likewise, when a low tackle came flying in to our waist area, we're not quite sure how we didn't fall over from the imagined impact. While only a few minutes long, the experience taught us two things. Similar projects in the future will become a truly exciting "experiential" medium, and wearing an Oculus Rift with headphones in an office full of people is a mild form of torture.