INTRO: A little over a hundred years ago, the light switch was invented in the sleepy suburb of Lynbrook, New York. If this fact isn’t enough to convince you of...
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At this moment of uncertainty, with tensions rising and accusations flying and an evil orange stooge puppet running for president, the people of Russia rather nobly invited VR Playhouse to come visit their country. They invited us to come talk about virtual reality at a tech conference but we like to think maybe also to broker a new kind of understanding between our country and theirs. So we sent Dylan. He’s harmless and, if you squint, he could maybe look a little Russian. And Dylan, as he is want to do, spent a day chronicling his adventures: 9am: It’s morning in Moscow and I’m rolling out of the Marriott Novy Arbat with my fellow non-Russian invitees, on our way to the Open Innovations Forum. We’re an eclectic mix of “entrepreneurs” and “experts,” ferried to Russia to speak on the various stages and panels that the forum offers over the course…
Days 2 and 3 were all about the demo. We planned to go big at the VR Fest event on Sunday, bringing with us an HTC Vive, complete with some new sample content we banged out in a week; an Oculus showing “The Surrogate,” a narrative piece we helped develop that combines CG with 360 video; and, of course, a Gear stocked with a bunch of our work from the last year and a half. Now that means two computers, two monitors, 3 headsets, a tracking system, cables galore, our big flashy sign and so on and so forth. And we took all this on a plane, which automatically means something or somethings is bound to be screwed up when you arrive at your final destination. So Saturday became a day of troubleshooting. We went to the friendly neighborhood Best Buy twice. Various members of the VR Playhouse team banged…
The learning curve has been sharp, but we’re getting a better grasp of 360 video creation every day. First, let’s recap: We began our efforts in 360 video from scratch. Initial challenges: What gear do you use? How do you stitch the videos together? WHY WON’T THESE VIDEOS LINE UP? (If you’ve tried your hand at stitching, you know what I’m talking about). We began with the 6 camera 360Hero setup. It worked. Both the Beach Day Video and El Matador Cliffs video were shot using six GoPros. However, there were what we call “glitches in the matrix.” More cameras = more coverage, we decide. We up our game and settle on the 10-camera 360Hero setup for shooting and Kolor’s AutoPano programs for editing. Our latest video, Dreaming Downtown, uses this 10 camera set up. We also up the production value on this video. Like most experimenting with 360 video, the beach videos allow you to…
“We should film people trying the Oculus Rift for the first time,” Ian says to me. It’s the same every time. Friend sits on couch, puts the Oculus Rift on his or her face, and below the ski goggle mask, a big smile emerges. Nobody puts on the Rift and isn’t totally blown away. I’m taking my friend Reyna through the developer’s kit demo, an animated virtual reality world of a small Tuscan villa. You start the demo inside the house, where you can look up at the vaulted, beamed ceiling, or down at the hard wood floor, at the staircase behind you, or out the window. By pushing the arrow keys on the computer, you can move out the door to a beautiful courtyard, where you realize you are on what appears to be an island. “You want to fly?” I ask her. A resounding yes. I push the =/+ sign on the…