Virtual Reality Poised for Mass Entertainment, but Can Hollywood Make It Happen?
Newborns are about unrealized potential; so are new technologies. Franklin understood that aviation would change the world, though it took the arrival of airplanes to realize some of his predictions. Today it seems to be virtual reality’s turn to take flight, perhaps to become as impactful as cinema and television. But the pioneers trying to tell stories in VR are grappling with the same question that confronted Ben Franklin that distant Wednesday in Paris: “What good is it?” Or, more precisely: “How do we use it?”
“I think from a cinematic storytelling perspective, we may be right around — or even before — (the time) metaphorically, when the Lumiere brothers created ‘Train Pulling Into La Ciotat Station’ ” (in 1895), says Eugene Chung, director of film & media for Oculus.
Because VR was nurtured in gaming devices and simulators, videogames have seemed like the most natural fit for the medium. But many developers are already using it for live-action experiences and trying to find the best way to fit it to narrative storytelling. “The original motto of Oculus was, ‘Step Into the Game,’ ” Chung says. “We’ve since modified it to letting people ‘Experience the impossible.’ ”
“Locomotion is a big topic in VR,” [Sony's Rick] Marks says, “How do you move around a 3D world?” “Walking” with a joystick feels fine in a console game; in VR, it can induce simulator sickness. Marks’ team is experimenting with letting players use “teleportation” — which amounts to jumping from point to point.
Another challenge arises from a sense few people are even aware of: “Proprioception,” the body’s positional sense. Going into a VR world and being unable to see your own body and arms can quickly become disorienting.
Many VR pioneers are learning from stage directors, who have always had to guide the audience’s attention using lighting, sound and staging, without being able to control point of view as a film director can.
Some VR creators are also studying theme park design. Hilary Lewis, an architectural historian who has done a deep study of the look and layout of Disneyland, observes: “What (Disney) did at the theme parks was take all the talents they had in developing film and apply that to creating a three-dimensional space you could walk around in. If that’s not the beginning of virtual reality, I don’t know what is.”
VR faces yet another obstacle: Putting on goggles and headphones is isolating. Yet, that’s the point: You shut out the real world for an artificial one. But entertainment is social, too. Today’s VR can quickly become a strangely ghostly, lonely experience, like Scrooge revisiting the shadows of Christmas Past or the dead Emily Webb reliving her birthday in the final act of “Our Town.” Developers are hard at work making the VR experience social, adding avatars for multiple users, and the like. That may turn out to be crucial if VR is ever to rival TV and movies.
Read the full story here: http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/virtual-reality-poised-for-mass-entertainment-but-can-hollywood-make-it-happen-1201193873/?curator=MediaREDEF