GE Marks $500M Subsea Research Project Launch With VR Experience from Studio Kite & Lightning
[Philip Lelyveld comment: this is a virtual world simulation like Second Life. I guess the new aspect is the level of detail.]
GE (General Electric) are celebrating the launch of a brand new $500 million facility in Rio, Brazil dedicated to researching the future of ‘subsea factories’ to mine oil and gas. The company decided to commission virtual experience auteurs Kite & Lightning (of Senza Peso and other well-known VR experiences) to build a VR experience to illustrate some of the extreme challenges involved.
They commissioned renowned virtual reality pioneers Kite & Lightning to create an experience which plunges the player to the sea floor at depths of 4 miles in a futuristic submersible. The journey is filled with snatches of information and facts on the kinds of pressures underwater equipment has to withstand at these depths and ideas on how the underwater factories might function in the future.
This is ostensibly an educational ‘on rails’ theme park ride and its subject matter could have potentially erred on the side of dull if handled poorly, but by plunging the the player’s virtual body miles below the sea, it somehow focuses the mind wonderfully. The busy interior of the pod buzzes with snippets of video as augmented reality style heads-up information is overlaid atop the scene beyond the submersible’s glass. It’s all rather effective.
Virtual reality’s innate ability to focus the mind and present information in new and hitherto unimaginably effective ways really shouldn’t be underestimated.
See the full story here: http://www.roadtovr.com/ge-marks-500m-subsea-research-project-launch-kite-lightning-vr-experience/