Since its inception, the Oculus Rift has shown great promise for filmmakers and a spectrum of other content developers.
To inspire more producers to jump on board, Oculus have recently teamed up with Pixar to release a groundbreaking short film, Henry, starring a loveable hedgehog obsessed with hugging. During the premier of the animated film, Pixar creative director Saschka Unseld emphasised the user experience as one that transcends traditional mediums such as television, so that the viewer is not merely observing but is being immersed within the film, creating greater empathy for characters.
“The goal with ‘Henry’ and these short films isn’t to be an introduction to virtual reality,” Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said.
“We’re trying to build things with Oculus Story Studio that other people can learn from and build better content from as a result.
Alongside the debut film Lost, Henry will be included with the Oculus Rift next year. Watch the trailer below.
Whilst the company has been big on inspiring contributors and promoting new content production, the big question is really whether people will buy the product or not and if it will become a normative experience.
“Quality is going to go up. There’s going to be more content, and a wider range of content,” he told The Daily Beast. “What if I said to you, ‘You can put on this pair of sunglasses and it’s a couple hundred dollars, but you can watch a VR recording of a sports game, or hang out with friends in a virtual café from all over the world?’ I think VR is for you. It just may not be for you right now.”
“People have never grown bored of doing things that are outside their own existence,” said Luckey.
“The point is, VR doesn’t have to be isolating,” Luckey said. “Right now, people are isolated from other countries just by geography. But if you could easily mingle and communicate with people from all over the country and the world without ever having to get on a plane and burn gallons of jet fuel to get there, that’s a net positive for humanity.”
“The idea is to help generate empathy toward the 3.5 million Syrian refugees living outside Syria,” producer Socrates Kakoulides told TechCrunch.
“I’m crying inside this. This is probably one of the most vivid experiences of my entire life,” said Mike Butcher from TechCrunch whilst watching the video.
While the film was specifically designed for the Sony Samsung Gear VR, it demonstrates the immersive experiences VR creates, revolutionising how we could be telling stories in the future.
Whilst the device has been widely used for storytelling and film purposes, also used as a promotional tool for the film Interstellar, the vision for VR was initially conceived with the idea of virtual gaming experiences. Xbox has partnered with Oculus for the release of the consumer VR model in Q1 2016. The Oculus will be packaged with a wireless Xbox One controller, usable with Windows 10, allowing the user to stream Xbox One games to the headset.
The development of VR has also inspired other companies to find practical purposes for the device, demonstrating the groundbreaking potential of VR and it’s wider implications in a range of fields.
Virtual tourism allows the viewer to become immersed in any location in what world, sometimes in places otherwise inaccessible. Oculus are driving the evolution of satellite technology one step further than Google Street View with virtual recreations of the Earth.
The VR platform itself has undergone immense changes itself to cater for this great variety of content. Oculus has recently introduced Oculus Touch, a pair of controllers that tracks the movements of your hands and fingers with close to zero latency
However, the Oculus Rift will not be paired with OS X, which may be a major set back for the product considering the amount of Apple users there are. According to a blog post, almost none of the popular laptops out there meet the graphic requirements for the device.
“Our development for OS X and Linux has been paused in order to focus on delivering a high quality consumer-level VR experience at launch across hardware, software, and content on Windows. We want to get back to development for OS X and Linux but we don’t have a timeline.”