Comcast NBCUniversal Hosts Hackathon in Hollywood, VR Demos Emerge
Challenges were organized by sponsors that included several large media-related companies interested in what the local development community could put together in a day or so. Corporations like the movie ticketing platform Fandango, the American Spanish television network Telemundo, and the science fiction franchise Battlestar Galactica offered up cash and a variety of goodies for those who had the best ideas. The grand prize was $15,000 and the opportunity to pitch NBCUniversal Media Labs to continue development of the winning prototype.
NBCUniversal provided five Oculus Rift DK2’s which could be used by developers to build their ideas.
Team Rules: Fast Oculus 7
This trivia VR game was developed by a group of University of Southern California students. The idea was to increase engagement with brands of television shows and films from Universal Pictures. The experience put individuals into a virtual room with red psychedelically patterned carpet. Various video clips played on the walls as questions appeared in front of the player which would ask general ‘What would you do if this happened?’ style scenarios. ...
Two female fans produced an amazing ‘second-screen’ experience for the Battlestar Galacticaseries that puts the user inside the futuristic world of the show. ...
During the Q&A part of their presentation, Peter Marx (CIO of the city of Los Angeles, and one of the judges) asked, “what would you do if you had a show that was actually shot to be used in VR?” This got everyone in the room thinking, ...
a developer at the hackathon named Partha created a game where players could drive the actual cars seen in the forthcoming Fast & Furious movie, Furious 7 (2015).
His program was coded in Unity and utilized a couple of vehicles downloaded from the asset store. The goal was create something that could be installed inside movie theaters before the release of the film. ...
The other experience was a virtual reality program that interfaced with a gesture control input system known as Myo. As seen in Battlestar Galactica, futuristic warships are controlled through a central operated command area known at the Combat Information Center (CIC). This faintly-circular room was recreated virtually by the mentors at the hackathon who utilized the interconnected Myo device, which senses electrical pulses being sent through the body when flexing certain muscles in the arm. The armband gadget would be strapped on, along with the Oculus Rift, and could be used activate items within the room. ...
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