iMyth

Tag: iMyth

  • IMAX VR Posting Initial Numbers

    IMAX VR Posting Initial Numbers

    This posting is really to help keep track of numbers which will be used to structure iMyth’s budget and business plan.

    From an article posted by Upload VR, IMAX LA VR Center Sees 15,000 Admissions Since January, we can get some initial understanding of the public response to immerse experiences.

    IMAX claims that it has 15,000 admissions in its immersive center at the Bridge in LA. what this number really relates to is the number of individual experiences sold not to unique visitors. That means with tickets selling between $7 to $10 for VR content, we can roughly guess that IMAX may have cleared $100,000 in ticket sales during its first few months of operation. Notably, that includes a soft launch at an IMAX VR location unconnected to a movie theater — future locations will be connected to theaters and might see more foot traffic as a result.

    IMAX will be competing directly against Dreamscape Immersive as they rush to create experiences based on Feature film releases. While iMyth is not immediatly aiming towards this market, it is interesting to see how things will develop.

  • Dreramscape’s Kevin Wall has ambitions of global domination

    Dreramscape’s Kevin Wall has ambitions of global domination

    Up until this point, there has not been much information about the LA startup, Dreamscape Interactive. The Dreamscape history was revealed slightly from a Forbe’s Article, Dreamscape’s Big Dreams for Immersive VR. The article explains a little of whom Kevin Wall and Walter Parkes are and what his ambitions are.

    One of the first, and most important of his accomplishments was partnering with Artanim, a Swiss research think tank focussing on motion and motion capture. Artanim burst onto the VR scene two years ago when they displayed their groundbreaking, immersive VR for the 2015 Siggraph. I may be a CGI snob but I have to admit the folks at Artanim have the real head start in the immersive experience game. The Void has spent millions but only gets to the point where Artanim starts.

    Relying on Hollywood serendipity and a powerful rolodex, the Wall nabbed as CEO the Disney Chief Creative Officer behind the massive Shanghai Disneyland project, Bruce Vaughn, who had planned to take a well deserved sabbatical, until Wall interrupted him with Dreamscape’s ambitious plans. Along with other Disney Imagineers recruited for the effort, Vaughn’s job is to spearhead development of both the experiences and the venue, which is being designed by Yves Behar, who Forbes described as “the most influential designer in the world.”

    With this high powered team Wall and Parkes have enlisted a prime crop of heavy huitting investors including Westfields Malls, three movie studios, and Parkes’ former boss Steven Speilberg. Because of their strategic alliance with the multiple studios, the group claims to be movie agnostic. While they have given no clues on what their first experience will be, it will be fairly safe to assume the experiences will coincide with the release of major films. With their focus on the most recent feature film IPs, I believe there is still plenty of room capitalizing on the infinite number of theme worlds which have already proven themselves.

    The group plans on opening their first experience at landmark Century City Mall in Los Angeles this fall. When they’re sure the venue can be operated profitably, they’ll explode into hungry malls around the country.  I’ll have to admit, this is a solid plan. iMyth plans on doing the same.

    Dreamscape Immeresive really seems like they have a good plan with a strong team to boot. It looks like I’ll need to be making a trip to Los Angeles this Fall to check out the new iMyth competition.

  • Creative Vive Tracking Usage

    Creative Vive Tracking Usage

    A couple of months ago, iMyth created a rough prototype of its immersive experience. One of iMyth’s key components is physical props and sets. We integrated very inexpensive props and sets into our experience. While not the most sturdy these set pieces did an outstanding job demonstrating the physically immersive concept.

    Bandai Namco has taken this concept one step further and created an experience based on the Doraemon Anywhere Door theme world. Using the HTC Vive, Leap Motion, and a few simple props tracked with attached Vive controllers, the team was able to create two very interesting interactive props.

    https://gfycat.com/SpiffyDisgustingHowlermonkey

    The first of these props is the door. Using a very simple props door placed cleverly inside the Vive play space in order to avoid loosing tracking. The use Leap Motion to track the participant’s hands which of course frees up the Vive Controllers. One of the controllers is placed on the edge of the door and is used to track the door opening and closing. It is a simple concept but the physical component is extraordinarily impact-full. What I really want to know is where did they get the great door prop? Notice that the prop doesn’t have a footprint larger that what it would have in real life. How did they anchor it? It looks solid.

    https://gfycat.com/ImpishCautiousGermanspitz

    The second object is a simple desk. Once again, all the creators did was attach a second controller to the drawer of the desk. The desk itself is stationary and never moves. Once again this is very effective use of a simple concept.

    I just place my order to HTC for 4 tracking “pucks”. We should get them by the end of the week. The pucks are going to be used to help track the interactor. However, I did forget that for every Vive there are two controllers. That means iMyth will now have 8 tracked objects to deal with. Where can we go from here?

  • Introducing Dreamscape Immersive

    Introducing Dreamscape Immersive

    I just discovered today there is a new player in town, Dreamscape Immersive. Dreamscape is a new Los Angeles-based startup for location-based virtual reality planning to open their first VR Multiplex in Los Angeles this coming September. The facility will use untehered VR headsets to allow consumers to move freely through a space and interact with real and virtual objects as well as with each other. This is very similar to the iMyth experience.

    Dreamscape has an impressive list of investors and supporters. Co-chairman Kevin Wall is an Emmy award winning producer. The company’s CEO is Bruce Vaughn, who until last year was Chief Creative Executive at Walt Disney Imagineering. Imagineering has been hinting at this new medium for the last ten years. Maybe Vaughn’s exodus signals Disney’s apathy or unwillingness to participate in this new field. Dreamscape has raised $11 million in funding in a round led by Bold Capital, with contributions from Warner Bros. 21st Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), IMAX Corporation, Westfield Corporation, and Steven Spielberg. Advisors include star designer Yves Behar and legendary film music composer Hans Zimmer.

    Just as iMyth has its sights on shopping malls, the first location for a Dreamscape Multiplex will be the Westfield’s Century City Mall, which is undergoing remodeling and expansion. iMyth will need to establish its empire in central Florida.

    Dreamscape has said that its multiplex will be powered by technology from Swiss tech and arts foundation Artanim. These folks have probably been doing immersive experiences longer than anyone else. I first learned about them before Siggraph 2015.  Artanim co-founders CaeciliaCharbonnier and Sylvain Chagué will serve as co-CTOs of the company. Artanim had been a non-profit foundation in Switzerland. it will be interesting discovering their ambitions over the next few months.

    One interesting thing to note is that they will be using the Vicon tracking system mixed with the OCculus Rift. A basic installation of the Vican cameras probably starts around $160K. This is a hefty price to pay. However, the Vicon system can track multiple objects at the same time including multiple participants and props without additional cost. At this moment in time that inital tracking cost is a bit expensive. iMyth will probably stick with the Steam VR tracking system in the near future.

  • Immersive Experience Market Heating Up

    Immersive Experience Market Heating Up

    I just read an article from the New York times, “With New Invention, VR’s Potential for Magic Gets Real“. It is an interesting article that gives a little background information about The Void, in Lindon Utah , and it gives a quick introduction of what else is going on in this new industry.

    The article goes on to expose some financial data that I have not seen elsewhere. The article claims The Void’s Ghostbuster Experience at Madame Tussauds New York has sold more than 43,000 tickets since July, which translates to nearly $900,000 in revenue. Up until this point, The Void has been funded by Ken Bretschneider who has already invested millions of his own into the endeavor; (Rumored $12-$15 Million). The Void is now working with the Raine Group, a merchant bank known for its investment in Vice and ties to the William Morris Endeavor talent agency, to raise expansion funding. There are also rumors about mall owners and theme park operators.

    The Void also sees itself as a new draw for dying malls, where anchor stores have been closing. Multiplexes, many of which are overbuilt, could convert auditoriums into stages. Film companies, eager for new ways to market movies and keep franchises alive between chapters, could turn to the Void as well.

    The competition in this arena is building as well. Last week, Imax said it planned to open six V.R. centers this year, some in partnership with AMC Theaters and Regal Entertainment, at a cost of up to $400,000 each, not including real estate. Last December, her in good old Orlando, Zero Latency opened its first installation. I have yet to encounter numbers associated with this arrangement.

    The competition in this new arena is building.  Last week, Imax said it planned to open six V.R. centers this year, some in partnership with AMC Theaters and Regal Entertainment, at a cost of up to $400,000 each, not including real estate. “Virtual reality is a complex ecosystem that’s in need of a jump-start, and we’re here to provide the spark,” said Rich Gelfond, Imax’s chief executive. Also announced last week was Dreamscape Immersive, which hopes to open its first center dedicated to virtual reality experiences in the fall. It has cobbled together $11 million in funding from companies like 21st Century Fox, Westfield Corporation and Warner Bros. Mr. Spielberg is also involved.

    The Void is fairly confident it will be able to stay a leader in this medium due to its three year lead exploring this new technology. I think they may have a point. This is a brand new medium in the realm of trans-media storytelling. All the rules are different and must be explored. The Void has a talented team of form VFX people and stage magicians. Luckily, iMyth is also endowed with talented individuals with considerable experience. With its first prototype, “The Courier”, iMyth now has a foundation with which it can start learning and mastering the nuances of this new field.

  • Full Body Tracking

    Full Body Tracking

    Lat month, in December, iMyth Demonstrated full body tracking for its interactor using the Perception Neuron tracking outfit. It was an impressive bit of engineering to get the system up and working and coordinated with the Vive and UE4. For the prototype example this tech strategy worked well. The participant understood the interactor and there was never any “strong” concerns about the problems with the tech.

    Regretfully there were many Problems.

    1. The Perception Neuron was “sensitive”. Sometime it wanted to come out and play. Some days we could not get it to talk no matter what we did.
    2. IMU Drift. Because the Neuron suit was only implemented with IMU trackers the suit never really understood its world space location and the interactor kept drifting off.
    3. Spazzing out. Occasionally, the character was just sort of go into a seizure, freeze up or go a little crazy. For the prototype this was fine but we need a more consistent solution.
    4. Finger Tracking. Did the Perception neuron actually track the interactor’s fingers during the actual experience? Regretfully we never tested. I have a concern they did not work.
    5. The Perception Neuron Suit was actually owned by one of our Technical Producers, Andrew. We are very grateful Andrew allowed iMyth to use the suit. Regretfully the suite left when Andrew graduated.

    In Mid-December, I also attended journeyed to Seattle to get Vive Lighthouse training. The Lighthouse id the tracking technology Valve uses to track all of the objects in the environment. With this technology we could track an almost infinite number of objects and build our own Vive Controllers. I immediately started thinking about how we could use this technology to easily track the interactor and participant.

    It seems like a couple of other companies were thinking about the same thing. Steve Bowler at Cloadgate experimented with strapping Vive Controllers to his feet. He was able to get some pretty good results.

    Steve’s solution was a great first start. However it was a bit problematic since he required an entirely new Vive setup to get the controllers. He did not have any waist tracking, (Important for tracking overall body movement). Also, controllers strapped to your feet are a bit awkward.

    Now it seems like the folks at IKinema have taken things one step further and and created their own Vive tracker controllers which are mounted on the feet and waist.

    This demonstration looks really sharp and claim to have no post-processing. I believe them. However the imYth solution is still not quite there. Project Orion may still take some time to become commercially available. Their solution required two controllers, one in each hand. For iMyth I am seeking a hands free solution so we would require a tracking device on the wrists and eventually some IMU finger tracking. Ikinema is also a Motion tracking company so I I would not be surprised if we wanted their technology, we would also probably need to purchase a suite of re-targeting tools which would be overkill for what we want. I don’t know. I’d like to get in contact with the Ikinema guys and investigate their plans for release.

    So this leads ups back to iMyth creating their own tracking solution. I just received an email from Reid at Triad Semiconductor saying they just received the go ahead to produce the boards needed to create custom controllers. Those will be available in 8 weeks. This will be exciting since iMyth will not only be tracking the interactor and participant but multiple other participants and multiple set pieces and props as well. Very exciting times!

  • Zero Latency Review

    Zero Latency Review

    This is the official iMyth review of the Zero Latency installation in Orlando Florida.

    Zero Latency, from Melbourne Australia, is one of the pioneering companies producing a new media format which I like to call, “Immersive Experiences”. Companies such as Zero Latency, The Void, VRCade and Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights are the first companies to create immersive experience attractions where folks must leave their homes and quite often pay extra money in order to “experience” the attraction. These attractions boast the interactivity of video games, the narrative of film and the immersiveness of theme park attractions. Last year, Zero Latency created franchises in Melbourne, Tokyo, Madrid(?) and Orlando, Florida. The collaboration with “Big Event” in Orlando is the first US  Zero Latency Installation. Let’s all hope they continue gaining momentum!

    Zero latency deserves many accolades for creating a profitable business model from a technology that has only become publicly accessible in the last few years. Great job guys! I could not wait to give the experience a try. I brought my family, (wife and two teenagers) to share the experience. The facility inside Big Event was polished and clean. The experience went off without a hitch. Participating in the experience with multiple party members was a huge win. Zero Latency can support up to six participants at one time.  The operators were friendly and polite and made the attraction enjoyable.

    The gist of the experience is simple. You and your party are a future commandos stranded in a futuristic junk yard under the attack of zombies. Kill as many zombies as possible before they kill you. Participants are equipped with a variety of guns, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Participants communicate via microphone headsets mounted in the HMD.

    Each participant is donned with a backpack computer, a plastic gun and a head mounted display with audio headset. I originally thought the backpacks would impact the experience negatively. However, after a brief adjustment period, the backpack was not even noticed. The HMD was comfortable enough and the gun was not too heavy. The illusion of immersiveness was not negatively impacted by carrying the extra weight.

    Regretfully, as far as the visual quality of the experience is concerned, Zero Latency has a long way to go before they deliver the promises  of their name. The latency was poor and felt slow. There was poor one to one correspondence with head motion and what was displayed on the HMD.  There were times the frame rate lagged so badly I thought the experience had stopped. Two of our party members became disoriented and dizzy. They left the experience nauseous. The VR representations of the guns were not good. The guns felt unresponsive. They were hard to load and operate since their response times were so long. Avatar hands operated the weapons. However, they were not tracked to my actual hands. This lack of correspondence contributed to the uncomfortable disorientation.

    The play of the experience is a standard zombie shooter. The participants run around the scene shooting zombies while trying to avoid being overwhelmed by the monsters. The experience lasts for fifteen minutes. Aside from the mentioned visual problems, there were other immersive detractors. While the participants could hold onto their guns, there were no other physical objects to interact with. Once understood there were no physical boundaries, it was just too easy to walk through walls, other participants and the evil zombies. If I was crowded by a horde of bad guys, all I had to do was walk away. The story behind the experience was minimal. My wife complained she was bored. Fifteen minutes of only shooting zombies was probably too long for her.  I myself noticed too many repeated characters, animations and set pieces. Participants can talk to each other through the earphone headsets. Regretfully there was no spatial association with the voices and the other participants. This made direct collaboration with other participants nearly impossible. This lack of collaboration combined with the insubstantiality of the environment made this a lonely experience.

    Regretfully the overall experience felt like a very fancy but poorly executed video game. The visual quality had the stereotypical neon/dark rendering quality of the Unity game engine. Guns occasionally floated in the air without bodies attached to them. Not only could I travel through walls and  other objects but the evil Zombies could as well. I wanted this experience to be more than just a video game but it seems that was the exact impact the creators were striving for.

    After the experience, I had an opportunity to share the experience with my family. They thought the attraction was an interesting diversion. Regretfully, none wished for a repeat experience. Similarly, none of the teenagers said they would suggest the experience to their friends. I was very impressed by the professional level Zero Latency was able to present their experience. However, I did not feel the quality of the VR experience was as good. The tracking, latency and overall performance issues still need to be improved. I hope Zero Latency continuously strives to improve these as well as continue developing more robust, and enriching content. I really appreciate the amount of hard work required to bring this immersive experience to reality. I hope Zero Latency refines and polishes their technology and develops more robust and enriching experiences. I feel if they don’t continually strive to improve the quality of their experience, they will be seen as an early, but rather mediocre presentation of what this dynamic media has to offer.

  • Wireless Vive

    I don’t normally write about improvements in technology. I would rather focus on Story and experience related topics. However this is groundbreaking and will have a significant impact on the HTC Vive.

    A Chinese company called TPCast has created a device add-on for the HTC Vive making it wireless. While some folks may balk at the $220 price tag on top of the $800 they already plunked down for the Vive, this may just be one of the key components needed to help get the VR Cade concept of the ground This is especially true with iMyth.

    [embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYMzuvjBbN4[/embedyt]

    One of the distractions for iMyth is we have created a 20’x20′ play space area. Regretfully this is longer than the actual cable is able to reach. We were planning to look into expanding the cable. However, for the new year, this wireless solution will be much better. Since the cable would have been very expensive, this more expensive alternative will be a welcome addition to the iMyth arsenal.

    Folks may not want to pay extra to have this wireless luxury at home. However, peripherals and accessories such as this may be just the hook to entice people to get out of their homes and have an iMyth experience!

  • Universal’s The Respository Review

    First of all, I would like to call out and congratulate Universal Orlando for putting out the money to create The Repository. The Repository represents an entirely new form of transmedia story telling which is now only in its infancy. To go out on a limb, shell out what looks to be a phenomenal amount of money and subject guests to not only a very pricey ticket ($50) and entirely new experience really take guts. It must have been a logistical nightmare to put all of the components together. For the most part they did a great job. They pulled it off and got it done! The experience itself had its good points and bad. All the same the experience was complete and most of the people coming out of the experience were rewarded with a good time, which is really the ultimate goal.

    The staff and the presentation were outstanding. The folks at the beginning of the experience were kind and friendly and offered an almost pub-like waiting area. After the experience, we had the opportunity to talk with the person who was in charge of IT for the experience. (If any computer system went down during the experience, her job was to get it back up.) Sarah was extraordinarily accommodating for the barrage of questions we sent at her. The experience executed without flaw and flowed like clockwork. What is most impressive is that this is one of the first times Virtual Reality has been integrated with immersive theatre and they were able to make it work.

    As with everything in Universal Studios, the presentation of the overall experience was outstanding. The rooms were expertly dressed and detailed. The props and sets were taken right from a movie shoot. All of the costumed performers and all of the sets were professionally dressed.

    The quality of the VR experience was not outstanding. This could be one of two reasons. The first is that the Head Mounted displays(HMDs) were untethered. This of course means the headset could only produce as much GPU power as the small device could pump out. The HMDs did not appear to be of GearVR quality . This could mean they were using something a bit more primitive and a bit more military grade. The second reason is that the experience may have been assembled very quickly not utilizing a commercial game engine. Being very stable is very functional but at the cost of quality.

    The quality of the tracking was not inspiring. To someone unfamiliar with VR technology it may have been acceptable. However, once you become familiar with some of the more modern tracking devices, such as the Vive, you start to become very sensitive to a less than perfect tracking. The latency of tracking information could have contributed to this less that awesome VR experience.

    Inside the VR experience were three “rooms”. They did a very good job maintaining a consistency with all of the three rooms. As I mentioned before, while the quality was less than thrilling, it was consistent. Consistency through the experience is essential for maintaining immersion. This the Universal folks did very well.

    Regretfully, the VR experience did not maintain consistency with the overall attraction experience. The sets, props and interactors were of such a high production level it was almost a disappointment to be in the VR experience. To me this is the hardest attribute to achieve. I would almost have suggested to Universal to make the entire experience in VR in order to maintain the level of consistency. That would have made the VR portion infinitely more complicated. One would have to ask if the VR portion was even necessary and could it have been pulled off by just adding three more props room to the experience and ignoring the VR. That is something only the Universal folks can answer.

    I love the fact that the experience was so heavily integrated with interactors. The actors themselves provided wonderful performances. This really helped with the overall immersion. Regretfully all of the performances felt as if they were following tight scripts and would not improvise. Of course there were breaks to keep unruly participants in line. Other than those situations the interactivity was extremely one way. I feel this was a lost opportunity for the participant to collaboratively build the story from their own perspective. There seemed to be no interaction in the VR experience. I was lucky enough to go into the VR experience by myself and they sent an interactor to go with me. Other than seeing an avatar representation of his character (a simple mask) there was no opportunity for collaboration. My companions who went through the experience together remarked that while they could see each other’s avatars, there was no real opportunity for collaboration and co-participation. I think if Universal attempts to build Repository 2.0 this should be one of their early objectives. The collaborative experience either through co-participation or with an interactor is what will make this new media really succeed.

    The sound in the VR experience was a big disappointment. Very simply the sound was cacophonous and contributed to the overall confusion of the situation. I heard commands being sent to me but was really unsure if I was being heard back. ( I did try to communicate back :)). Maybe further investigation in binaural sound will help alleviate the overall confusion this created.

    I had problems with the overall story and theme. Honestly, I was overwhelmed and spent most of the time wondering just what was going on. I was lost in the story and ultimately the objective. There were some recognizable components but then they seemed to get lost in the blur of activity. (I never realized how cliché the iMyth experience was until I participated in The repository) I was overwhelmed. If the stories flowed a bit more consistently I feel the experience would have been much better.

    Reinforced by a military sub-element(I never really understood what or why) the entire story was extremely linear and felt as if it were on very tight rails. This killed the interactive storytelling aspect for me. I wanted time to take in the experience, converse with the interactors, explore the sets and the VR worlds and in general immerse myself into the story world. I suppose this would be too cost prohibitive and prevent the numerical throughput required for Universal to make a profit. I still can’t help feel I only received a small sampling of the ultimate potential. Maybe this is enough to make folks want to come back for more. However, the $50 admission price tagged on to the already expensive HHN admission left me feeling unsatisfied. I wanted to understand more about this story world but regretfully will never obtain.

    During the “play” and VR portions of the experience, the interactors could touch and physically interact with me but I could not touch them. I understand this limitation from the immersive theatre aspect. However, I really wanted to touch things in VR. My hands kept going through objects in the scene and this broke the immersive feeling for me. I personally had no problems being touched by the interactors within the VR experience. However, as we found out later, this upset other participants immensely. Regardless, I still wanted to touch objects while in VR.

    All in all, I am very happy to have gone through Universal’s Repository. This is the first venture into this new immersive transmedia storytelling format and they were successful in pulling it off. Great Job Universal! Of course I have my criticisms but they do not discount the fact they were able to combine the myriad of logistics to create a cohesive experience. I hope my criticisms may provide a better and more rewarding experience next year if they decide to do this again. I very much hope they do!

  • Universal’s “Repository” VR Halloween Experience

    It would seem Halloween is the perfect demonstration for creating VR experiences. Big guns like Universal are no exception. A review of their new experience, Universal’s VR Horror Experience can be found on the IGN website.

    At first perspective, it would seem that VR plays a complementary role in an experience that is part immersive theater and part escape game. With that said is would not seem the Repository is a direct competitor. However, they do have some common themes that are shared with the iMyth prototype.

    One of the themes that really stands out is having haptic feedback and interactors operating puppets that provide a more physical experience than just VR alone. I was told by a former Halloween Horror Nights employee that they had to tune down the VR experience with the interactors because it was too intense. What that looked and felt like I’ll never know. However, this does represent the emotional impact physical presence has in the immersive experience. The iMyth prototype does a good job testing some of these concepts.

    I’ll need to set a date with some of the iMyth crew to travel to Universal’s HHN and check out the repository. I’ll probably curse myself if I let this opportunity slide by.