Baobab’s ‘Jack’ Merges Theater And Virtual Reality With Empathy
I was ushered into the room without any means of interacting with a digital space. At first, I did my best to take in my cartoonish surroundings, not paying much attention to where I was walking. I hit my head on a light-bulb hanging on a string, which may as well have been akin to a figurative light-bulb switching on inside of my cranium.
“Oh, this is all real,” I murmured to no one at all.
And it was. Well, about as real as mixed reality gets, anyway.
I walked over to the far end of the room where a hot plate burner was running and a kettle was sitting idle. I picked it up and placed it on the burner, where there was quite clearly some kind of heat source concentrated in that area. I walked back across the room, bumped my head on the same damn light-bulb (because it still hadn’t sunk in that my virtual world and the real world existed in the same capacities), only to be startled by a voice and a physical presence in the room with me. I suppressed a yelp.
Chelebourg acknowledged that it was a difficult task, bringing theater and virtual reality together.
Lee pointed out that it was difficult to live up to the Baobab ethos of bringing the best virtual reality experiences to everyone in the world when the installation could only accommodate one person at a time.
Jack is a fully immersive experience, straddling the virtual and physical worlds in a way that I’ve never seen before. Chelebourg’s gift for visual storytelling and emergent narrative is stunning. Baobab’s eye for talent is equally astounding and the indie studio may very well see another Emmy under its belt by this time next year. More than anything, I’m truly excited to see what Part Two of Jack will look like.
See the full story here: http://www.shacknews.com/article/104726/baobabs-jack-merges-theater-and-virtual-reality-with-empathy