dreams Archives - VR Playhouse Immersive Content for VR and AR

Apr 13

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What It’s Like to Work in Virtual Reality

By jordanh | Storytelling, Technology | No Comments

Let’s be real. Virtual reality is having a moment. Headsets are shipping, people are talking and VR is popping up all over pop culture in weird, interesting ways. It feels sweepingly omnipresent all of a sudden, like there was this plan in place to make VR a part of all of our lives and now that plan is in motion. And so people ask me what it’s like to work in the virtual reality industry. This is a hard question to answer in an interesting way. It’s difficult? It’s exciting? It’s crazysexycool? Yes. But also: Working in virtual reality is like being a first year resident on a primetime medical drama Not that I ever watched “Grey’s Anatomy” because for sure I never did but somehow I know that the pilot episode covered the first 48 hours in the residency of Meredith Grey and friends, just like the pilot episode…

VR Playhouse is going to SXSW!

By jordanh | Festivals Conferences MeetUps, News | No Comments

Here’s a piece of news that we’re very excited to share: “The Surrogate,” a narrative, virtual reality experience VR Playhouse co-produced with Peter Flaherty and Logan Brown, is a finalist in the VR/AR category at SXSW’s Interactive Innovation Awards. Melding 360-video with a computer-generated explorable environment, The Surrogate immerses viewers in the consciousness of a female protagonist whose point of view they control as they explore the photorealistic passageways snaking behind the walls of a modern house. The viewer can see into the rooms of the house through a series of portals in which live action, hemispherical videos offer an immersive vantage point. The viewer is able to choose how they experience the narrative by moving through the passageways autonomously, deciding how they follow the action, and which rooms they look into at any given time. As the story begins, we learn that our protagonist suffers from an anxiety…

Adventures in VR Storytelling, Part I

By jordanh | Storytelling | No Comments

The emergence of a new means of narrative happens, on average, about once every twenty-five years or so. This is a very inexact estimation, about as inexact as my definition of “narrative means.” Let’s just say that the means is the way in which a person receives their stories. So, for instance, in the 20th century, there were three big ones that emerged. First, there was film. Then came television. And then came video games. You could maybe also argue that comic books constitutes its own system but there have been serialized adventure stories with illustrations for quite awhile so is that really its own narrative conveyance? You can see what I mean about inexact. But so anyway, the point is that each of these systems came with their own rules and parameters and ways in which they function in partnership with the human brain and it took awhile for everyone to figure it all out. We’re…