Samsung had a huge presence at Sundance this year as the mobile sponsor of the festival. They were evangelizing Gear VR to independent filmmakers with their Gear VR theater as well as collaborating with Sundance’s New Frontier program to provide Gear VR headsets for the mobile VR selection of cinematic VR experiences. I had a chance to catch up with Jim Wilson, who is the director of immersive products & VR for Samsung.
BUTTS: The VR Experience has today come to Gear VR, released by creator Tyler Hurd. We just can’t get enough of BUTTS.
Chris Madsen steps into the beloved universes of Star Wars and Jurassic World via ILMxLab’s ingenious 3D C.A.V.E experience which uses positional tracking to create the illusion that you’re inside the film. It’s called ‘Holo-Cinema’.
Virtual reality has an amazing capacity to make you feel like you are somewhere else, and to step into new worlds. But as far as actually being an accurate stand-in for most real life activities, VR still has a long way to go. Cloudlands: VR Minigolf, however, is so darn close to the real thing that I would not advise investing in any minigolf business opportunities any time soon.
One of the best narrative VR experiences that I had at Sundance New Frontier was 6×9, an immersive experience of solitary confinement. You might ask, “Why would you ever want to do that?” Well, it was less about having a direct experience of solitary confinement, and more of a polished immersive journalism piece that explores the psychological damage of solitary confinement using a number of interesting VR storytelling techniques. I had a chance to unpack a lot of these techniques with Francesca Panetta, who has a strong background in audio production and audio narrative journalism.
While shooters and adventure games are a natural fit for VR, Owlchemy Labs’ Job Simulator is one of the most unique VR titles to date. It’s a genre-defying mix of puzzle, humor, and, in a way, exploration, in a form that could only work in VR. A new trailer for the game shows exactly what kind of whacky but awesome moments you can have inside.
This is footage of artist Wesley Allsbrook, using an Oculus Rift and Oculus Touch motion controllers to paint in virtual 3D space in front of a live audience using Oculus Story Studio’s ‘professional’ VR paint package ‘Quill’.
When we first learned about Final Approach last year, we thought it looked a lot like a VR version of games like Flight Control (iOS, 2009). And while that wouldn’t be a bad thing—as Flight Control is a great little mobile game—Final Approach, goes way deeper.
Today Valve is hosting a SteamVR developer showcase in Seattle, WA. Featured are titles from 12 VR developers, all of which will ship on the HTC Vive in 2016, says Valve.
Backers who supported Oculus’ 2012 Kickstarter are getting a free consumer Rift headset courtesy of the company, but only if you submit your details by February 1st.
Today during the Sundance Film Festival, Oculus has announced Story Studio University, and initiative by the company to “inspire and educate the next generation of VR filmmakers.”
Markus “Notch” Persson, the creator of Minecraft, has published an experimental virtual reality project that takes the form of a ray marching fractal renderer that runs in the web browser.
At the Sundance Festival today, Oculus launched a new virtual reality application that harnesses the motion controlled accuracy of the company’s Oculus Touch controllers to let you paint in virtual 3D space. The results, are quite impressive looking.
Asunder developer Aldin Dynamics has been creating VR content since 2013 and they’re back, this time with an experience designed to demonstrate the magic of virtual reality by gifting your virtual self wizard’s powers.
Rose Troche knows that the first-person perspective is flawed, and she wanted to show people just how vulnerable it can by telling a single story between four different points of view. She teamed up with Specular Theory’s Morris May again for Perspective Chapter 2: The Misdemeanor, which is a powerful example of storytelling that’s only possible in VR. It gives you a direct experience of how our perceptions and biases can shape our eye witness testimony of a police shooting.
