Australia Just Got Its First Holographic Arcade

Remember Euclideon? The Brisbane-based technology house famous for showing off highly detailed graphics in laser-scanned areas? It’s back, this time with the Holoverse, a massive “holographic arcade”.

Situated on the Gold Coast, the Holoverse has 40 curtained-off rooms with white walls, ready to present 3D landscapes for you to explore. It feels a bit like a laser tag setup. Dark rooms, belts, introductory videos. I managed to actually get up there and play the thing, and wrote about my experience in the upcoming Game Informer. But the facility is open now, so anyone is free to go try it out.

While the official price is $50 for a 20-minute experience, it looks like for the month of June it has a 50% discount, which is probably a good idea to reward the early fans. At launch, there’s one experience available, which is actually a collection of 10 smaller experiences designed to let you know what’s possible and get your brain comfortable with Super Duper Augmented Reality (SDAR, which I just made up, could you tell?). Turns out the human mind isn’t amazingly comfortable with moving through solid objects and needs to acclimatise.

Later on, there are other games planned, as well as a historical/scientific wing, which will allow you to see ancient Egypt, or shrink down to watch ants at work.

Annastacia Palaszczuk, Premier of QLD, recently cut the ribbon.

“Nothing beats being on the Great Barrier Reef and seeing it for yourself but imagine the advantage of someone in China taking a virtual tour of the Reef and enticing them to visit,” she said.

According to the office of the Premier, Euclideon is also working with medical teams to visualise complex neural networks in 3D, and Nasa has also expressed interest.

Learn more at the Holoverse web page.