"Sword Art Online: The Beginning" is an IBM-sponsored project aimed at turning Reki Kawahara's book series into a virtual massively multiplayer online game.
Using the cognitive computing power of Watson and the SoftLayer cloud service, IBM, in partnership with Namco Bandai, will reportedly test the title in Tokyo next month.
Participants will don VR headsets and appear in the virtual world as a 3D-scanned avatar, according to Kotaku, which cited Japan's Dengeki Online. Instead of the traditional gamepad, players become the controller.
And while the release video (above) highlights an Oculus Rift,SlashGear said IBM plans to support the HTC Vive, as well.
Few details have been revealed so far, and IBM did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment.
Sword Art Online is a 2009 Japanese light novel series set in the near-future, which focuses on various virtual reality massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
An anime adaptation aired in Tokyo in 2012 and streamed on Crunchyroll and Hulu; it hit North American television sets in 2013, and is available for binge watching on Netflix.
IBM, meanwhile, announced at MWC that it's incorporating the Apple Swift runtime and package catalog with the IBM Cloud to enable cloud-based enterprise app development with Swift. Customers can leverage the MobileFirst platform for themselves, allowing them to manage mobile and hybrid app versions from a single platform.
This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.
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