Mark Kern
Well-known member
Both 3D and Quicktime VR were never big hits with me. 3D just seemed dimmer and with more eyestrain and Quicktime VR was cool for looking at car interiors I wanted to buy, but that's it.
Then I tried Oculus Rift. When you merge 3D with head tracking, you get amazing results. Esp with the new DK2 units, the latency certainly feels solved.
There are things VR can do that no other medium can. The sense of "presence" is astounding and not something that can be put into words. One element that surprised me is "sense of scale."
In Oculus VR, you can FEEL how BIG things are! There is a demo of walking into an IMAX theater simulated in Oculus VR. Watching a movie in this simulated theater FEELS like a huge screen (resolution isn't there, but scale is). There is another demo of our solar system that compares the size of our planets to each other. Again, you FEEL this in a way that you never can in regular 3D or games.
After using Rift, I feel I have a memory of a true experience, instead of a memory of looking at a screen. The feeling is at times so real that I have bumped into my desk trying to "reach" for objects in the headset (it was the demo of sitting at a desk which did this..the calibration demo. lol).
I think there is great promise in VR movie-making. Nature and landscapes will feel as big as real life for nature documentaries, for example.
But learning it will take time. Does anyone remember the first films ever made? They had no concept of editing, for example. One famous Fire Rescue early film shot it from the firefighters perspective, then the rescued woman's perspective, and just played them one after the other with no intercuttting. Editing is a language that had to be developed for film. Shot types are a language that had to be developed. Audiences had to "learn" these languages. A modern film would make no sense to those first early movie-goers.
VR is going to need its own language too and an audience willing to learn it. But unlike 3D which is a "nice to have," VR is something that really grabs many people.
Then I tried Oculus Rift. When you merge 3D with head tracking, you get amazing results. Esp with the new DK2 units, the latency certainly feels solved.
There are things VR can do that no other medium can. The sense of "presence" is astounding and not something that can be put into words. One element that surprised me is "sense of scale."
In Oculus VR, you can FEEL how BIG things are! There is a demo of walking into an IMAX theater simulated in Oculus VR. Watching a movie in this simulated theater FEELS like a huge screen (resolution isn't there, but scale is). There is another demo of our solar system that compares the size of our planets to each other. Again, you FEEL this in a way that you never can in regular 3D or games.
After using Rift, I feel I have a memory of a true experience, instead of a memory of looking at a screen. The feeling is at times so real that I have bumped into my desk trying to "reach" for objects in the headset (it was the demo of sitting at a desk which did this..the calibration demo. lol).
I think there is great promise in VR movie-making. Nature and landscapes will feel as big as real life for nature documentaries, for example.
But learning it will take time. Does anyone remember the first films ever made? They had no concept of editing, for example. One famous Fire Rescue early film shot it from the firefighters perspective, then the rescued woman's perspective, and just played them one after the other with no intercuttting. Editing is a language that had to be developed for film. Shot types are a language that had to be developed. Audiences had to "learn" these languages. A modern film would make no sense to those first early movie-goers.
VR is going to need its own language too and an audience willing to learn it. But unlike 3D which is a "nice to have," VR is something that really grabs many people.
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