everybody norm from tested here and I'm joined by Jeremy from tested will from
will and Jeremy will have joined us today to assemble Nintendo's latest toy
con it is the Lavo VR is that very excited about this
I love toy cons and I love VR there's an interesting video because we love
building things and we love VR I'm not sure like how many people who have
reviewed this really are as deep into VR as we are so we're gonna have an a
unique perspective on this before we dive into it a quick overview of what
this is of course this is the labo fourth Wabo cardboard kits that you
build to attach to Nintendo's switch previous ones could turn into a robot
there were minigames a vehicle kit and this one this is the full set there are
a couple of different versions you can buy but this is the full VR kit that's
$80 and has in addition to the cardboard goggles that you attach to the switch
five different accessories you can also buy it as a starter kit which has the
goggles plus the blaster that's $40 and then the other kits which are the
elephant the bird and the pedal and the camera those are $20 for two of those
which ends up being the same price right bucks each for two yep
so what we're due today we're gonna assemble it if you've watched our
previous labo assembly videos before you'll get to see some time lapse we'll
get to jump in chat about some of the interesting engineering cuz they're cool
engineering that goes into making these labo sets yeah if you're new to Lavo
this the build is not in my opinion the best part of the things the games are
always fun but they're not why you buy it you buy it to learn how they work by
building them yeah and they're using the accelerometers and the gyros in the nets
which in really interesting ways for us who we know vr we're curious how they're
gonna combine those three degrees of freedom movement devices into something
that can maybe track her maybe not track where you want I'm just really soaked
with three of us here we can get to building we can divide and conquer get
this building out of the way upfront get it done really fast nope really at once
which there's only one cartridge but we do have three pairs of hands and so one
of us is going to go check out the pieces from the 32 sheets
on the inside and then one of us is gonna go assemble and one will feed
other persons so very similar you got your rubber bands I've got some gaskets
you have what looks like lenses and then a bunch of sheets of car color coated
per project that's right--we're saw the top one which is cardboard set a and
engage that time-lapse camera let's go
we have put together the first piece which is the VR goggles a little more
complicated than your Google cardboard right but still cardboard but still
cardboard and interestingly enough there is a piece of tape they'd use first for
lava where you've used we've tried all the lab OHS and this is the first time
we've seen that in play I mean it I guess it helps right it keeps things
together why not use it's got to get it in that slot and without the tape it
wouldn't get in there yep so there is a lens assembly here which has plastic and
the lenses we have not taken off the protective covering yet but we arm you
can take off the protective cover okay VR goggles this is the core of all the
accessories for the labo VR switches in here with the cover on top the foam pads
keep it secured in place and you put the headset on there's so many games you can
play which you control with the joique on there are a lot of mini games there
was a big screen with like 20 mini games on there that you can play already yeah
already it's like shootie games and shooting galleries and stuff like that
it looks like so no straps are supposed to hold it so then one hand of games one
hand with the controller one hand to move around and there's even a sensor up
here or at least an indicator to tap here twice up which will then exit you
out of things like the home menu it kicks you back into the list of all the
things you can do in VR we also know that the top flap is on
quite the right way but since you have to take it apart often we'll fix that
between now and the next time we come back now on to the other accessories and
we are back a little bit time has passed and we've lost a member of our build
team Jeremy's dead Jeremy could not be here and in fact
will you took this home to assemble yourself yep oh you do it live on Twitch
most of it I didn't build the bird on Twitch but everything else was built on
Twitch and I would love to hear from you your experiences now with the kit
because I got to use the blaster before he took off and my media impressions was
that this is surprisingly good I would say overall surprisingly good is how I
feel about this like they've done some really clever cardboard engineering some
really clever technology work on the VR side to get a surprisingly competent
like cardboard base be off you're thinking this is gonna be like Google
via Google cardboard or even gear VR daydream or something like that I think
we're actually better more interesting games probably a little bit lower
graphical fidelity perhaps than some of those stuff but a better experience
definitely than cardboard and and I would say as interesting as gear VR
logically well let's go through some of the experiences and explain to you guys
how they work is it's really difficult to communicate visually definitely what
you see through this headset right yeah so the blaster yeah and everything kind
of works with a mount so we built this you guys saw the switch goes in here has
these lenses and then that slides in here yep and then the controllers go on
basically what's in front each of course have gyroscopes and
accelerometers and one of the controllers also has a camera so this
one it's the right joique on one with the plus on it has an infrared camera
and illuminator on the bottom it's got black plastic if you have the great
controllers you can't actually see it that well but on the blue and the red
and the yellows you can and it gives them basically a way to do some machine
vision stuff really really inexpensively and really easily and they use it for a
variety of different things for example on this one the blaster do you aim the
camera into the muzzle and when the when the rack that you slide and cocked a
fire is released it sees that the fiducials come closer to the camera and
it knows that you should made your shot and of course that makes so much sense
now in the past labo that we've built we would put the the collective tape on the
inside of like the piano on the inside of other devices and the camera would
see that and it would try and that's how with the piano would work or that toy
box house would work but they are essentially fiducials their tracking
markers essentially yeah just like we would have in in VR so you could seem
really well in the front of the elephant actually yes so those five white dots on
the front are infrared reflective stickers they work kinda like
your license plate does so you know how if you shine a headlight a license plate
it always reflects back directly at the source of the light yeah this works is
the same way for infrared light and so and one of the neat things I didn't
realize with earlier labo is in the Discovery section you have make you have
play and then you have discover in the discovery section they show you explain
how all of this stuff works on this one like starting with all of the features
of the Joye cons including the camera including the accelerometer and
gyroscope the IMU including the HD Rumble stuff including
even down to like how you know triggers and the pots on the joysticks and stuff
work in some cases and all that transparent enough so you can actually
see what the camera sees yeah and get a sense of how the camera is tracking the
reflective tape mark it makes it like for example with the elephant one where
it uses the fiducials on the front to give you an extra point of data to
correct I am your drift which we all know about from old VR headsets it shows
you what the camera sees live while you're while you're moving the elephant
trunk around and it's it's really an interesting educational opportunities is
much more transparent than most of the other VR stuff that's out there right
now so the blaster it's a kind of a shooting gallery game like I said there
is a ratcheting mechanism with the rubber bands and it's cool because you
can actually release it when you have the the droidcon in there and so you
actually have some almost haptic feedback in cardboard but so so that
what are the interesting things about this is that they they use the cardboard
to give access to more verbs the blaster is the least interesting of those
because you know we all know you can pull the trigger to shoot on a gamepad
but the the camera is a good example of something that isn't verb that usually
have access to yeah this it's funny then here you can hold that and see what you
see what it feels like with the with the normal within the discover portion of
this the characters talk about how old tiny cameras worked yeah which i think
is really use real cameras all the time use DSLRs and they talk about turning
the turning the lens to zoom and they break down how the system knows that
just the front is turning it's it's really fascinating how they educate in a
way that kids are able to understand so they understand how this stuff all works
which is really really cool which is a stacking two three degree of freedom
sensors three three of them yeah with it with them yeah so for example
they they illustrate okay if you if you wanted to make this game work without
having the cardboard how would you do it you'd hold the blue controller and you'd
hold the screen and then you twist this blue controller and it would know but if
you twist the screen and the blue controller at the same time is it gonna
know right no because the the different drivers go
see to myself it's they do a really good job of breaking that stuff down and
making it accessible um a couple of other things that we haven't talked
about yet is that it is usable not in VR mode without the lenses without the
lenses so if you have a kid that's too young to use VR if you get motion sick
with this kind of low Phi 3 Dolf VR you can put this extra sleeve in and just
slide it in just like anything and play all the games from the back this is
probably how you'll capture your so it's a flat screen window into that same
space but you can use still all these things you can use it the same way you
would otherwise so so I mean verbs verbs are interesting here because you have
camera verbs twisting and shooting all that kind of stuff yeah this one is a
weird was I think the weirdest one like most of the labo kits that have come
before I didn't spend time with the vehicle one but the other two some of
the stuffs really awesome and amazing and like really Nintendo a video games
some of them were kind of like tech demos in a little thin on the
actual gameplay side the air pedal wind pedal I think is what they call this one
definitely fits in that category so you put a joy Kon in into your foot thing
here and then you put it on the floor underneath you and you press this with
your foot while you have the gall where you're
holding the goggles up to your face and the gaze equally is an analog controller
for flying accelerating remember birdly yeah when you when you dive you feel the
wind blowing in your face alright same thing no wind in the face yeah the the
basic when are you at the win to the face because the scoop doesn't actually
oh my pretty good job blow in the wind in your face oh wow the game is really
thin though like you play a frog balls fly are you if to jump up and land on
top of the balls it's it's a little bit it's a little light that's a really
clever way of giving you some type of feedback but it gives you face feedback
I wish I really wish that they would have integrated this with one of the
other toy cons so like if you have the bird one yeah it's good flat by pushing
your foot down and get the wind in your face alright let's talk about the bird
one because this one I'm super curious about you know easily mock because
you're putting your face up to the butt of a bird look at look at this though
look at this it's so good it looks like a bird you're gonna we're gonna have
bird eyes here just a second me put this it's very cute see when you put the
joystick and the trigger stick out so he looks like he has little black eyes
clever and it still works of course as the sensor still work so this one you
pulled on the two cardboard frames here can you flip to flap the wings of the
bird and then you can fly by tilting this one's kind of neat because the game
is actually a little more robust you fly around this island it's kind of like
woohoo island or whatever you have to find these eggs you hatch the eggs and
then the the birds that are inside the eggs give you tasks to complete there's
no kind of visual tracking anything on this it's just the I am use in the heads
in the in the screen and on the on the controller but it's I think that's one
of the better games out of all of them and they've made these things modular
now too which is interesting so you can take normally you can take this put it
on the back of the head set and you have this propeller that you blow okay you
put a joy Kon in here the camera faces down you see there's a little reflective
tape on each of the ends so it can see the movement of the
of the rim wheel you can also put this thing on the bottom of the bird and then
it's right up against to hold it up against your face norm now blow yeah you
can you can basically do the same thing with the bird and that lets you shoot
bubbles out of your mouth that make the game a little bit more engaging for an
older kid and it's the same type of tracking there's this small tracking yes
applying it soon a different control scenario exactly the bird is also so you
are looking around moving around how much movement do you feel like you could
you you should not they are very clear that you should stay seated while you're
playing this it is incredibly challenging to get let's say a six year
old who spent some time in the vibe to stay seated while they're using VR don't
leave this unsupervised especially with your younger kids stay in the chair
you're mostly tilting your head and leaning forward and back to fly on that
one yes and even when you're moving your head around you don't want to move
quickly because you're gonna see the pixel smear when you're stationary and
kind of drifting around a little bit that's when it's most comfortable and
the lenses are good enough that you can wander your eyes a little bit around the
lens and still get some clean the lenses are surprisingly good yeah the the thing
I would say is definitely don't you're gonna want to use this for like five
minutes right yeah it's your arms get tired
especially with the flapping motion holding the bird up there you're you're
not you know it's not a natural position to hold your hand it's fairly heavy you
know it gives you warnings every five or six minutes when you're playing which is
about the right amount of time in my experience all right finally the
elephant now we save this for last because it sounded like you are the most
impressed by by this I think this is the best the cardboard construction on this
one is relatively simple it took like 30 minutes to put together I think it's one
of the easier ones the bird the blaster both more complex the whole thing is
held together with rubber bands right I see so there's a rubber band
here that gives tension there's another one that makes the joint there's one
that holds here and it's a really really fascinating solve for a really
complicated problem you know they have three I am use each of them are gonna
drift in different directions they needed a way to keep them relative to
each other and this rubber band solution works unbelievably well combined with of
course the camera that we mentioned pointing back the fence of the elephant
and that corrects for drift so that again these three are
they know the system no there are they are relative to each other and then this
bait they can correct for that drift based on the mechanical properties of
the trunk and you have a lot more like freedom of movement than I thought
possible in the game you actually see like a pistol type activator that has
lateral movement it has full full 6 DOF on the on the nose relative to your head
relative CITIC you're only moving this much space but it works you can reach
pretty far like I can reach the full extent of my arm with it up into my face
which I was kind of shocked by the other mechanically there's a this whole nose
thing works to push the trigger on the tip of the Joye con which works well in
games it's I was again shocked that that works I mean the whole thing about la
mode that I've used so far is that it works really really well even for
something that's just cardboard yes so there's two games with the elephant one
is like a it's like a maze ball track thing that you put together that gets
really complicated as you get with the higher levels there's fans and you can
change gravity and very similarly a fantastic contraption type puzzle yeah
it's like a physics e it's like a marble run physics puzzle right the other game
is like tilt brush so you can grab different kinds of a different colors
and brushes there's a relatively limited numbers of brushes there's like fire
they're stars there's basically it's just like a fat you know big fat tube is
the main one but they have an art gallery and then there's some games
where you can do like pictionary start where you draw a drawing and then you
put your hand it to your friend and they have to guess what the drawing is and
stuff like that I mean you can't doubt Nintendo like we were so skeptical about
the technical capabilities mostly because we were focused on the display
the things that we the finger that's daily and the optics the things that we
associate with comfort and VR but it turns out of a limit by the content
limit by the physical design of these so you're not encouraged to really move
around and if you follow the rules of sitting you're gonna really delightful
experiences which is very nintendo now the thing I will say is I have a child
that has been exposed to the full power of a vibe and yes 10 10 by 10 foot area
she played this stuff for like five minutes okay go play the vacation game
in the other room so if you already have VR
you're not gonna wow your kids with Lavo right it's fun the building
really fun the building is I think probably you know three-quarters of the
entertainment in this in this product the V ours really need it's much better
than I expected and I don't mean that as a kind of
negative it's it's it's shockingly good but they managed to get out of this
hardware and some you know it stamped cardboard and really it's kind of
ingenuity and interaction that we haven't seen a lot of high-end VR either
because we've kind of been limited by you know the the hand presence types
game so they're great but like this is just so creating more verbs more burn
more verbs yeah you are a bird I'm flapping flapping away thank you so much
well for assembling this and will we continuing our coverage of lab OVR in
the future because they're gonna allow for expansions breath of the wild
odyssey that's right yeah covering those in the future but hopefully this gives
you a sense of how these come together how they're technically impressive how
they're mechanically impressive and how the games are just quite delightful and
if you want to watch the camera the air pedal and the elephant build the
highlights are my choice channel it twitch.tv slash meant that the link is
in the description below and we'll see you next time bye
you