November Meeting: Virtual Reality!

Everyone showed up for the meeting this past Monday super excited to try out the library's new HTC Vive virtual reality system. But we did manage to eat pizza and talk about Want, by Cindy Pon, a little bit beforehand. Even though we felt guilty since Jin Corp turned out to be evil, most of us thought the protective suits sounded really cool. Personally, I wanted the flying motorcycle that Jason got to zoom around in. We were divided about how realistic we thought the portrayal of the future was; all of that pollution and the huge divide between the haves and have-nots didn't sound fun. But we did have fun watching Sam, our VR guru from IT, use VR Google Earth to fly around present-day Taipei in Taiwan, which is where the book takes place. The surrounding mountains were beautiful, and we even got down to street view to check out some land-bound mopeds and the super tall Taipei 101 skyscraper building.

After Sam gave a quick safety talk, I demonstrated Longbow, one of the play options in The Lab, the VR game each Bookshopper would get a chance to try. I'd played it once before so didn't completely embarrass myself as I used a bow and arrow to defend a medieval castle from invaders - phew!

Each person was able to play around in one of the The Lab's minigames for four minutes in order to give everyone equal playing time. Most people chose to play Longbow; it really does feel like you're shooting an arrow, and if you engage in the rapid fire technique that Isaac advocated for, it's actually a pretty good workout too.

A couple Bookshop members wanted to explore other aspects of The Lab. Avery visited Vesper Peak in the Washington Cascades where she bonded with a robot dog and threw it lots of sticks.

A few of the Bookshoppers also visited a lava tube where they got to blow up a bunch of colorful balloons that floated around the cavern. Hima chose to zoom around the solar system, throwing planets around and juggling Jupiter.

I think we all wanted to keep playing around when Bookshop ended, so I will do my best to schedule another VR evening before our last meeting of the year.

Our next meeting will be on Monday, December 18th, in THREE weeks instead of four, due to the Christmas holiday so get reading! We will be discussing The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare and playing with elements, as the magicians do in the book, using Sculptris, a free 3D modeling program.