Virtual Reality You Can Touch: Nomadic Wants to Bring VR Experiences to Malls, Movie Theaters
During a recent demonstration at the company's office-slash-warehouse space in San Rafael, California, Nomadic's staff handed me an Oculus Rift VR headset connected to a portable backpack that housed the computer capable of rendering the company's VR experience without the need for any additional wires. Also essential to explore the demo: A real-life, bulky flashlight with a real button, which in turn triggered the same flashlight in the virtual world.
That flashlight wasn't the only physical object incorporated into the VR experience, which one could explore by walking around just like in the real world. A set of leaky pipes let off some real hot air, a file cabinet actually had to be opened to retrieve a real-feeling gun replica, a virtual reality door could only be operated with an actual doorknob. All the while, all of these objects were rendered perfectly in the virtual world, where shooting drones were flying above and city lights were shining in the background.
Instead of building and operating its own VR locations, Nomadic wants to partner with bigger players that already have a lot of real estate at their disposal and are now looking for the next big thing to retain and monetize audiences. Think mall operators, theater chains and the likes.
To make operating VR experiences easier for these companies, Nomadic is looking to build completely modular sets that can be reconfigured within a few hours based on simple instructions. The idea is that a theater or mall space runs an experience for two to three months, and then simply downloads the next one to its computers, completely with an instruction set on where to place doors, furniture, levers, heaters, fans and other physical cues.
However, Nomadic doesn't want to build all of these experiences itself. Instead, it wants to cooperate with both VR studios and traditional content creators to adapt their stories for this new world, in which VR headsets play as much a role as flashlights and wooden planks.
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