The starship IKAREE · Live mode
The starship IKAREE: sixteen decks, and your room is one of them
The IKAREE is the newest deep-space explorer of the Union Fleet and the peak of the human line of starships. In Live mode, now in development, it stops being a view from a chair: your room becomes a deck, your real chair becomes the captain's chair, and you walk the ship on your own feet.
Ship specifications
- Registry
- PUV XB-2, Planetary Union Vessel
- Type
- Deep-space explorer, flagship of the Exploration Corps
- Length
- about 410 m
- Beam
- about 180 m with the nacelles
- Height
- about 72 m
- Decks
- 16, eight of them visited by turbolift
- Crew
- about 420
- Home port
- Ares Yards, Mars orbit
Live mode: your flat becomes a starship
- Mark your chair. Sit in your real chair, look forward and hold still for five seconds. That chair is now the captain's chair, on every deck.
- The platform is measured. The game reads your headset's boundary and fits a command platform around the chair. Put your hands on the armrests and the control panels move there.
- Walk the deck. Stand up and walk. Everything you can touch is on the platform; the rest of the ship stands around it, three times its size, from the viewscreen at the bow to the gallery at the back.
- Take the turbolift. It stands in the rear-left corner of your platform. Name a deck and ride: at least four seconds of light and sound, while the computer calls out the decks you pass. The floor never moves.
| Mode | Your room | How you play |
|---|---|---|
| Live | 4.6 × 3.6 m free space or more | A 4 × 3 m platform around your chair. Walk the whole deck edge to edge. |
| Compact | 3 × 2.5 m or more | A 2.4 × 1.9 m platform. The same decks, a little closer together. |
| Seated | Stationary boundary | Everything from the chair. The turbolift comes to you. |
No teleporting, by design
Many VR games move you by teleporting or sliding the world under your feet. IKAREE does neither. You walk where you can really walk, and the ship moves outside the windows. The turbolift is the only way between decks, and it moves you with light and sound, not motion, so your eyes and your inner ear always agree.
Safe in a real room
Reach more than 20 cm past the edge of the platform and a force field flickers under your hand while the controller vibrates. Lean out with your head and the ship dims, with an arrow back to the platform. The shape and size of your room never leave the headset: the AI crew only ever hears that the captain is on the bridge, never where your walls are.
Live mode is in development and not yet part of the Early Access build. The images below are renders of the new deck models.
Eight decks you can visit
Deck 1
Bridge
The viewscreen ahead, Brooks at the helm and Hart at science below you, Cole at tactical behind. Lean toward the helm, watch Hart's scan, step back to tactical.
Warm beige light, a cupola overhead
Deck 2
Captain's quarters
One lift ride below the bridge. A window on the stars, the replicator, your personal log and messages from home.
Low ceiling, dimmed lamps
Deck 4
Transporter room
Watch who materialises on the pad and set the pattern buffer by hand.
Blue-gold flashes
Deck 5
Sickbay
In the protected core of the ship. Biobeds, a patient, the surgery behind glass and the hypospray cabinet.
Cold white light
Deck 7–8
Stellar cartography
A walkway over a sphere of stars nine metres across: the Union and its sectors, the mission route, the IKAREE's own voyage.
Darkness and stars, even under your feet
Deck 9
Crew lounge
At the very tip of the bow, with a window across the whole front of the ship. The best view aboard belongs to the crew, not the officers.
Evening orange
Deck 10–13
Engineering
Between the nacelle pylons. Lean over the railing into the pit and look up at the warp core. Repair plasma conduits with your hands.
Pulsing blue
Deck 15–16
Shuttle bay
In the ventral module. The control booth looks down on the shuttle; you work the bay doors and the force field.
Work floodlights, a 12-metre hall
The other decks hold crew quarters, laboratories, hydroponics and stores. The turbolift announces them as you pass. Hydroponics, an observation dome and crew quarters may open later.
The turbolift
The lift cabin is the one thing that travels with you between decks. On the way, light bars run up or down the walls, or sideways on the horizontal branches to the crew lounge and engineering. A short ride takes about four seconds, the bridge to the shuttle bay about eight. Only one deck is loaded at a time, and the doors open only when the next one is ready.
Early Access
Take the chair.
Early Access on the Meta Horizon Store. The public store page opens soon.
- Meta Quest 3 / 3S, standalone
- PC VR on Windows: Air Link, Link or OpenXR
- Seated, voice-driven, internet and microphone required