Is VR Virtually a Reality?

VR – virtual reality – has long been a dream for avid gamers where they can completely immerse themselves within a 360 degree ‘virtual reality’ world with which they can fully interact with. Early versions of VR technology meant that the interaction was limited, graphics were rudimentary, and the technology was primarily marketed at gamers.  With the major landmark hit by Oculus however, its releasing of the highly anticipated virtual reality headset, Oculus Rift, onto the mass market this year, means that the technology is now not only being exploited for gaming, but for cinema too.

On January 26^th 2015, Oculus revealed that it was moving into the realm of cinema with its new film division Oculus Story Studio as it “looks to broaden its horizons and experiment with narrative through virtual reality” .  Oculus Story Studio plans to release five more films this year, one of which is set to be directed by Malificent’s director, Rob Stromberg.

Oculus Story Studio released it’s first ‘film’ at this year’s Sundance Festival with Birdy.  It wasn’t the only VR films to premiere at Sundance with 11 films in total.  Virtual reality debuted at Sundance in 2012 with Nonny de la Peña’s Hunger in Los Angeles which placed viewers in the middle of a food line outside a church. This project was developed by Palmer Luckey, who went on to develop Oculus Rift which was successfully launched on Kickstarter and purchased by Facebook last year for $2 billion.

There were initial concerns with the technology, with limited interaction, static scenes, and even motion sickness.  There have also been concerns with practicality of gaining material to cover 360 degree images, such as the placing of lighting, and to what extent does that viewer interact with the images, and how much, if any, can they alter the storyline.

However, investor Chris Dixon, argues that all the technology needs is a period of experimentation as VR is a completely new medium in which we have to learn how to utilise it.  He wrote that, “filmmakers had no idea what worked and what didn’t: how to write, how to shoot, how to edit, etc.  After decades of experiments they established the grammar of film. We’re about to enter a similar period of exploration with VR.”

Visionary VR has already started to uncover new film making techniques for VR by creating new editing software, which is itself is a Virtual reality. The editing suite is purely situated with a Virtual Reality.  The issue with VR is that it’s easy for viewers to miss the action as things can happen from all different directions, and not just what you see in front of you like the traditional film. “Visionary introduces the concept of partitioning a 3D world into zones, dividing the narrative frame from everything else,” where narratives are temporarily paused whilst viewers cross into different zones, in order to minimize the viewer from missing anything.

A top down view of a 3D world with Visionary's frame system. Source

VR is looking to be more than just ‘hype’ this year, and more of a reality, with VR heading into the mainstream market. Google released a series of apps which allows you to turn your mobile phone into a VR headset with the aid of their Google Cardboard.  For a pricey $200, you can purchase Oculus Rift’s VR headset, as mentioned earlier.  Although there are already several cameras on the market which can film in 360 degrees, a French Company has even developed a portable camera which lets you create your own Virtual Reality by allowing you to film in 360 degrees, which they debuted at this year’s CES.

Additionally, the National Basketball Association announced earlier this week that it was planning to film some of their events with VR cameras from BigLook360 where viewers will be able to access 360 degree 'highlights' for free from Samsung Milk VR store.  Although the viewer can’t interact within the basketball court directly, it is a huge step for VR technology.

So although right now VR is only best experienced in short bursts, it’s being proven that the potential for the technology as a narrative device is becoming a reality.  This means that the film industry will have to establish new storytelling conventions in order to accommodate the interactivie nature of the technology so that they can eventually create a full feature length film (although that’s way into the future!)