Kite and Lightning: Senza Peso
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| Kite and Lightning: Senza Peso | |
|---|---|
| Information | |
| Developer | Kite & Lightning |
| Publisher | Kite & Lightning |
| Platform | Oculus Rift (Platform) |
| Device | DK1, DK2 (2014 versions); Oculus Rift CV1, HTC Vive (2016 release) |
| Operating System | Windows |
| Type | Experience |
| Genre | Exploration, Action/Adventure |
| Input Device | Keyboard, Mouse (original listing) |
| Game Mode | Single Player |
| Release Date | June 4, 2014 (original); October 11, 2016 (Steam) |
| App Store | Oculus Share (historical), Steam |
| Website | https://store.steampowered.com/app/496190/Senza_Peso/ |
Senza Peso is a cinematic virtual reality mini-opera by Kite & Lightning. It places the viewer aboard a boat travelling through an imagined afterlife. The original VR App was released for the Oculus Rift (Platform) development kits in 2014; an enhanced version followed on Steam in October 2016.[1][2]
Features
The experience follows a predetermined route, with the viewer able to look around the surrounding scenes. Its principal activity is watching and listening rather than steering the boat or completing objectives. The 2016 release retained this passive presentation.[3] A later study using the Oculus Store edition describes a roughly seven-minute gondola ride with changing environments, fire, water cascades and human figures beside the canal. Its study setup allowed rotational and positional head tracking, but provided no active input or interaction.[4]
Production and adaptation
Senza Peso adapts a short-film mini-opera by Cory Strassburger and Alain Vasquez.[1] In a June 2014 interview, Strassburger described a song, sung mainly in Italian with a spoken Russian passage, as the starting point for the film. Its imagery drew on the River Styx and a passage through the afterlife. The VR adaptation reused suitable film assets while rebuilding the environments around the viewer's position in the boat.[2]
The VR production used Unreal Engine 4. Live performers were filmed against a green screen with separate left-eye and right-eye cameras. The team mapped those recordings onto camera-facing billboards in the virtual scene. Strassburger explained that the controlled route made this technique practical. John Dewar used Unreal's Matinee cinematic tools to synchronize the camera movement, events and level loading with the music.[2] This combination of rendered environments and recorded performances differs from simply playing the original flat-screen film inside a headset.[2]
Release history
| Period | Version and context |
|---|---|
| June 2014 | The original Windows VR experience was announced alongside the separate short film. A contemporary forum record dates the developer's blog announcement to June 4; Ikrima Elhassan posted a Windows download and distinguished it from the short film on June 5.[5][6] |
| August-September 2014 | Epic advertised Senza Peso as a hands-on Unreal Engine 4 experience at PAX Prime. By September 3, contemporary testing and a download link documented the DK2 version with positional tracking, following the earlier DK1 release.[7][8] |
| October 11, 2016 | The enhanced re-release arrived on Steam and the Oculus Store for the consumer Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Steam identifies Kite & Lightning as both developer and publisher.[3][1] |
The developer's Steam listing also records a Proto Awards win for Best Score.[1]
System requirements
The enhanced Steam release lists these PC requirements (checked October 2026).[1]
| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 7 SP1 64 bit or newer | Windows 10 64 bit or newer |
| Processor | Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater | Intel i7-4790 equivalent or greater |
| Memory | 8 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GTX 970 equivalent or greater | NVIDIA GTX 1080 equivalent or greater |
| Storage | 2 GB available space | 2 GB available space |
Steam lists SteamVR or Oculus PC support. Its historical Windows 7 minimum predates the Steam client's Windows 10 requirement, effective January 1, 2024.[1]
Use in research
Crescent Jicol and colleagues used the Oculus Store version in a 2023 study of emotional expectations and presence. The main experiment involved 126 adults randomly assigned to seven conditions: six groups received music or spoken material intended to prime relaxation, happiness or fear, and a control group received no priming. A separate 36-person pilot helped select the experience. Participants completed self-report measures of emotions and presence around the approximately seven-minute presentation.[4]
Their models associated differences between expected and felt happiness or fear with particular presence measures. The study did not detect an effect of the priming conditions. They identified self-report measurement and the lack of interaction with the virtual figures as limitations. These results concern that experimental setup and do not establish a uniform emotional response to the work.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Senza Peso". Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/496190/Senza_Peso/. Retrieved 2026-10-18.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Kent Bye (2014-06-21). "#30: Kite and Lightning team talks about Senza Peso, Unreal Engine 4 vs. Unity, 3DUI, motion capture technique tradeoffs, VR lessons learned & future of cinematic VR storytelling". Voices of VR. https://voicesofvr.com/30-kite-and-lightning-team-talks-about-senza-peso-unreal-engine-4-vs-unity-3dui-motion-capture-technique-tradeoffs-vr-lessons-learned-future-of-cinematic-vr-storytelling/. Retrieved 2026-10-18.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Ian Hamilton (2016-10-11). "'Senza Peso' Is A Must-Download Available Now For Rift And Vive". UploadVR. https://www.uploadvr.com/senza-peso-rift-vive-steam/. Retrieved 2026-10-18.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Crescent Jicol, Hoi Ying Cheng, Karin Petrini and Eamonn O'Neill (2023-03-16). "A predictive model for understanding the role of emotion for the formation of presence in virtual reality". PLOS ONE. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0280390. Retrieved 2026-10-18.
- ↑ "Senza Peso by Kite & Lightning". Epic Developer Community Forums. 2014-06-04. https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/senza-peso-by-kite-lightning/5516. Retrieved 2026-10-18.
- ↑ Ikrima Elhassan (2014-06-05). "Senza Peso: A VR Cinematic Epic through the After Life". Epic Developer Community Forums. https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/senza-peso-a-vr-cinematic-epic-through-the-after-life/5520. Retrieved 2026-10-18.
- ↑ Dana Cowley (2014-08-27). "Come see Epic Games and Unreal Engine at PAX Prime!". Unreal Engine. https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/come-see-epic-games-and-unreal-engine-at-pax-prime?lang=en-US. Retrieved 2026-10-18.
- ↑ Paul James (2014-09-03). "New DK2 Enabled Senza Peso Featured by Epic Games at Pax Prime, Download it Now". Road to VR. https://www.roadtovr.com/news-bits-new-dk2-enabled-senza-peso-demo-featured-epic-games-pax-prime-public-release-imminent/. Retrieved 2026-10-18.