Worn Out
Obviously I haven’t done too many updates since the first day I was at SXSW and that article was all about Oculus. Basically my excuse is that SXSW is fascinating, fun, big, and exhausting all at the same time. Many late nights and many nights not seeing a pillow until around 3AM. Unlike many news sites, I have only myself at these shows. The other thing about SXSW is that there are a lot of little things to report on, but not a lot of huge things. Unless of course you are in the Film or Music portion. The Interactive portion is a lot like most other computer expos. Lots of folks showing their things and others doing their talks, but only Fove had an HMD on display. A few vendors did have some VR experiences, but there were very few. The Gaming Expo was easy to get around on Friday, but on Saturday and Sunday its almost like the Thunder Dome. Except that in this case, many people enter and you are pretty sure you are fighting to be the one person to leave. It’s fun, but oh so crowded and not much to see once you’ve seen it the first day. So I’m going to compile my thoughts from the last few days I was there.
One man enters….and immediately gets swallowed by the crowd.
Virtual Reality
Despite the fact that there were about 21 talks about virtual reality, only so many of them were very interesting. There was a surprising number of people talking about VR and film or documentary. While this is very exciting, right now we are talking about 360 video which really isn’t virtual reality. As was pointed out many times during the show there is a pretty far cry from 360 video to 3d films, TV, and entertainment and no one is really doing it in the 3d realm yet. To me this is when it will be true virtual reality. That isn’t to say that I don’t find 360 video interesting and some of the ideas that were being discussed were pretty cool. Imagine for a moment that a journalist takes a 360 or 3d depth camera to the place they are reporting from. Instead of just seeing an image on TV and still being divorced from it, you login to your favorite VR news site and you get into the scene. This will change how we view things like war footage, or perhaps you take a tour through a refugee camp and you get much closer to what is going on. It is an important development in some ways. But of course it may also lead to other issues. Will being that close to what is happening help us understand or simply desensitize us even more? From another angle, people who spend time in foreign countries like doctors, missionaries, and explorers can who people what they are doing in unprecedented ways. Like everything with VR it has so much potential, but there are plenty of bugs that will need to be worked out.
One area where story is being brought to VR is Oculus Story Studio. They aren’t doing anything feature length yet, but they will be doing many short stories that will allow us to not only enjoy the story in a new way but actually interact with the world you enter to hear the story. Interactive stories and movies where you may or may not be the main character. My personal hope for something like this is that it leads to mixed media ideas where kids are encouraged to enjoy the story, but they are also encouraged to read at least part of the story. It could end up being a great way to encourage a love for reading which will continue to be an important skill for decades to come, no matter how interactive our content is getting. We’ll just have to wait and see. Unfortunately Oculus’ presence was relegated to discussions and panels only. Story Studio was no in attendance. Much of this information came from a panel which had some documentary film makers, and Jason Rubin from Oculus, Formerly a founder of Naughty Dog Studios. One of the cool things that came out of this particular panel was that this technology is still so new that there is really no expert out there yet. The field is still waiting for it’s defining application. There is still so much room for folks to dive in and tackle how we will define VR for the future, at least it’s beginning stages. Despite the excitement around it, it’s still an infant technology. How long this will be the case is anyone’s guess though.
Trailblazer in VR Domain panel. Jason Rubin (far right) of Oculus had some nice information on what Story Studio is attempting.
Augmented Film Experiences
Another interesting talk was done by the folks from Kite and Lightning, the creators of the Unity VR demo The Bat Cave and Unreal demo, Sensa Pezo, among others. Currently they are responsible for developing the Divergent: Insurgent VR demo which they did at the request of Lionsgate Studios. It was great to hear these two guys talk about their work and where they see VR going so far as augmented and virtual reality tie ins to exciting new films. There have always been film tie ins, but nothing that really puts you in the universe like VR can. It may not be a step towards VR film, but it is an exciting new avenue for VR content. I have yet to try their newest demo, but they did talk about how there are actually interactive game style elements in there to discover that have to do with how you approach the situations that you (as a divergent) are faced with. The way you face the birds coming at you or how you handle the train coming towards you. I’m excited to try it. Right now it’s available for Oculus and GearVR. What is super cool to me is that these guys prove that a small team can do big things in VR. They are a two man team, an artist and a programmer. They are doing some of the coolest demos out there graphically. You don’t need a 100 million and a team of 200 to do some really cool content. In fact that was a recurring theme the entire show. The real push to figure out VR will most likely come from the small teams of 10 or less, rather than the larger studios who will wait for the concept to be proved out before they or their partners will be willing to invest the money to take part in this technology. At least so far as software is concerned. On the hardware side it’s already the large companies that are driving VR, but that makes sense. It takes millions to develop hardware, lots of R&D, and then you have to get it into the hands of the consumers at a reasonable price. Still its exciting to know that the realm of content is going to be driven by smaller teams that are willing and able to take chances on their games, apps, and software. Much of the pioneering will be done by these teams and it’s likely that the defining apps will be produced here as well. Perhaps with an infusing from larger companies that finally jump in once the concept has been proven sufficiently for their liking. It’s an exciting time to be an artist, developer, and designer.
Cory Strassburger, Ikrima Elhassan and James Madigan (Divergent VFX Exec Producer) talk about being a divergent in their VR experience.
The Inevitable VR Advertising
We all knew this was going to happen, but another big discussion was the use or VR and AR technologies for advertising. Whether we like it or not, marketing is one of the means by which these smaller teams are going to be able to do what they do. But beyond the software being developed, things like HoloLens are going to open up many opportunities for mixed reality applications in places like restaurants where you might look at an item on the menu and instantly be given the nutritional information, or the same with food on a grocery store shelf. Not to mention in the case of the later location, ads being sent to your devices vying for your attention and telling you why they are better even while you are walking the aisles. It certainly has the potential to be annoying, but it also has the potential to drive prices down for the consumer. The more instant the competition, the quicker companies will have to be on presenting competitive sales. Whether or not that last part actually happens though it’ll be a boon for graphic designers and VR/AR developers. Someone with very technical skills and an understanding of design will be needed to make all of this happen. To me this means that VR is going to usher in a second Information Age. Or if you consider mobile to be the second, then the third.
Beyond the use of VR in physical stores, we have to consider the virtual reality store fronts that will become a norm as the technology matures. Facebook will definitely have a launching pad when you use their service, Galaxy Next Corp is already working on something like this. They want to be a one stop shop for all virtual reality content. A place to shop, see movies, concerts, and other events. You can bet that both of these will rely heavily on in app advertising, but in this case it makes perfect sense. Instead of buying large billboards to put along our highway systems, they’ll put them on the information highway and by virtual billboards for folks using VR to browse the web. This is a ways off still, we need some consumer launches that meet with critical success, but it’s clear that marketing companies are already exploring where to go with the technology.
Final Thoughts
SXSW was a fun and interesting show. I got to sit in the Deloreon (sadly they would not let me take it out and visit the past or future) and I met some great people. I wouldn’t say that VR took center stage the way it did at GDC or CES, or like I expect it to at E3, but it was there in many different forms. One thing I didn’t mention in this article was the FOVE head mounted display from Fove Inc. I said previously that I would get to see this and I don’t think I’ve talked about my experience yet. You might guess that since I am not going to give it a lot of writing time that I was a bit underwhelmed by my experience. It’s not that it’s horrible, but they just weren’t showing enough to really get you to buy into the experience. The one demo they had working was a little game where you use your eyes to shoot down spaceships. It worked and the eye tracking seemed to work well, but I found myself straining very quickly. The intense focus required to use your eyes to constantly be shooting at something is a bit much. The device was also very heavy and if it slides on your face or you adjust it then you have to re-calibrate. However the engineer assured me that the consumer version would not require this and would be much lighter. I also hope the eye strain induced by using it will be worked on as well. I can’t see using this for more than maybe twenty minutes before I’d need to rest my eyes. Something I don’t have an issue with on the DK2 and is not an issue at all on the Crescent Bay. They concept is awesome, but it needs a lot of work. The graphical quality to me was no better than the DK2, yet the Fove is at 1440p. Though the issue could have been more with the demo content and less with the hardware where quality was concerned. I couldn’t compare it further as they had no other demos. They will be launching sometime next year and while they will have developer kits they will be costly and limited. As of my demo they said they’ve have 20 developer kits they’d give to key developers and the cost would be 2-5k per unit. So most of us will be waiting on this one. If they can pull it off there will be many applications and they’ll force SensoMotoric Instruments to figure out a good answer since SMI’s current answer will cost you 15k and a DK2.
I brought someone a snack and I got this sweet ride. Okay, not really, I think the flux capacitor was broken.
So that is about it for this show. I’m on my way home today and can’t wait to get back. Keep an eye on the blog, we have many more articles coming. I’m going to do some articles on games that are or will be implementing VR. Alien Isolation, Dying Light, Elite Dangerous, which already implement VR and Star Citizen which will be supporting it again later this year. I’m also hoping to see the Vive in the next few weeks. I’ll even do some videos for your entertainment on these games. We’re also looking for other ideas that might be of interest to you so please do chime in and let us know what you’d like to see covered. We’ll do our best to try and cover it. We appreciate you coming by and taking the time to read our articles. We hope you continue to find them useful and entertaining.
Walking the edge of virtual reality for you.
Joe
Verging Reality 