Imagining the Future of VR at Google
[Film] can show a world previously unknown to you. But it’s Vertov’s perspective on the world.
With VR it’s about you being convinced that you’re physically in another space. VR is an embodied medium: creators are taking that detached eye and reattaching it to someone’s face.
From a cinematics standpoint, Felix & Paul are technically excellent. But if anyone is going to be remembered, it’s a kid from the Czech Republic named Tomáš Mariančík who created an experience called Sightline: The Chair. The idea is: the world evolves as you spin. So I’m looking at a candle. If I look away and then look back, the candle will be a cube. And I’ll look back at the cube and it will be a building, and then a tree. Everything changes, everything evolves. The only way you can stop it is by not moving. But you can only do that for so long before you move a little bit, and on it goes. It’s kind of drug-like, where suddenly you get beyond your anxieties and you feel euphoric.
I look to gaming for a lot of clues. Most games won’t immediately throw you into the worst possible fit. No, they’ll say, “Here are some mushrooms and if you step on them they’ll die, and if you eat them you’ll grow.” And you progressively gain strength and get to the boss levels. I believe you have to create similar cadences in VR.
VR is its own medium. It’s not going to hurt any other medium. You’re going to see a lot of traditional-media folks trying to get it to work in their domain, and they may succeed. I don’t know. But something really special is happening.
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