Voices of VR Podcast
Developing a New Eye Interaction Model with Eyefluence
I had a chance to do a demo of Eyefluence, which has created a new model for eye interactions within virtual and augmented reality apps. Rather than using the normal eye interaction paradigm of dwelling focus or explicitly winking...
Framestore VR on Digital Lightfield Workflows & VR Ad Campaigns
When I was at SIGGRAPH this year, one of the hottest topics was figuring out the workflows for how to deal with the complexity of capturing, processing, and distributing volumetric digital light fields. Otoy's Jules Urbach had a lot...
What Dungeons & Dragons Can Teach Us About Storytelling in VR
Dungeons & Dragons is a form of collaborative storytelling that isn't constrained by time or budget. Because it's all happening within the theater of the mind, if you can imagine it, then it can be constructed instantaneously within everyone's...
Spherica’s Stabilization Technology Used in HBO’s ‘Westworld’ VR Experience
HBO premiered a VR experience for their new Westworld series at TechCrunch Disrupt, and they used Spherica's camera stabilization technology in order to pull off an extended live-action tracking shot in VR. Common advice given to new VR filmmakers...
20th Century Fox’s Ted Schilowitz on Bringing VR & Interactive Storytelling to Hollywood
When Ted Schilowitz was looking for what to do after traveling the world as the first RED Camera employee, he happened upon an opportunity to serve as a futurist for 20th Century Fox, looking at how to use emerging...
“Luna”: A ‘Deep Game’, Narrative Puzzler about Recovering From Grief & Trauma
One of the best VR experiences I did at PAX West this year was Funomena's Luna, which is a unique blend of tactile puzzles, creative world building, musical improvisation within the context of an emotionally-charged narrative. Luna is designed...
Adding Haptic Feedback through Inaudible Bass with SubPac
It was on a San Jose sidewalk in 2015 that I first tried the SubPac and felt like I was immediately transported into a dance club standing in front of giant subwoofers with the soundwaves of bass rippling through...
Wide-Area Tracking for VR Arcades with OptiTrack
OptiTrack premiered a new demo at GDC that shows the extent of their tracking technology precision. They put passive tracking markers on a basketball and football that allowed people to go toss a ball back and forth to each...
Simulating Crowds of Virtual Humans in Immersive Environments
The IEEE VR conference held a new pre-conference workshop this year on Virtual Humans and Crowds for Immersive Environments. Movies like Lord of the Rings and video games like Assassin's Creed use this research in order to create convincing...
Tracking Your Hands Using Flex Sensor Technology with Manus VR
I had a chance to try out the Manus VR hand-tracked controller on the expo floor of GDC this year and saw that there a couple of really strong use cases for having your hands and fingers tracked in...
‘Rick and Morty Simulator’: Making Narratives More Plausible through Interruption
When Owlchemy Labs' Alex Schwartz saw that Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland was a fan of their Job Simulator VR experience, then he reached out and met up with Justin in Los Angeles. They came up with the...
Embedding a Story Within a Place with Rand Miller, Creator of ‘Myst’, ‘Riven’, and ‘Obduction’
When Rand Miller was a kid, he played Dungeons & Dragons with his brother Robyn where they would go on adventures together exploring and creating imagined worlds. They wanted to embed that same sense of wonder and awe of...
A Professional Gamer’s View on VR eSports
Stephanie Harvey (aka "missharvey") is a professional eSports gamer playing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with the Counter Logic Gaming Red team. I had a chance to catch up with her at PAX West to talk about the future of eSports...
Opting Out of a Phobia with VR
Theresa Duringer has a fear of flying, and rather than treating her aviophobia with VR exposure therapy she's been experimenting with using VR to just completely opt out of the real-life signals of the flying experience altogether.
She's found some...
Using VR Revolutionize Sports Training with STRIVR Labs
When Derek Belch was a kicker on Stanford's football team in 2007, he took a class with the Virtual Human Interaction Lab's Jeremy Bailenson where he was exposed to virtual reality technologies for the first time. Belch asked Bailenson...
