iMyth

Tag: Oculus

  • Boom Town: The Ultimate Immersive Experience?

    Boom Town: The Ultimate Immersive Experience?

    I recently came upon this Facebook article from the UK about, what they claim, the world’s most immersive experience: Boom Town.

    https://www.facebook.com/BuzzFeedUK/videos/2330089977077212/

    Before this posting I have never seen or heard of Boom Town before. It sounds a bit like an English variation of Burning Man mixed in with a music Festival. Music Festivals are wonderful immersive experiences. I love how Boom Town is a theme world integrated with the festival. I wonder if the theme world changes each year they put this festival together.

    As far as iMyth is concerned, I think it would be awesome to empower participants to participate in an immersive theme world, such as Boom Town. With the magic of the internet, participants may choose how they interact with the theme world; actively, semi-actively or passively.

    The most dramatic method would be active. Participants would be required to go to an immersive theme world arena, such as iMyth, put on the immersive equipment and jump into the fun. They would be able to physically act and react and participate with all of the sensory stimuli the theme world has to offer. Folks who participate in this method are the most adventurous and crave the most interactive of all experiences.

    Semi-actively, participants could join in the fun from their mobile devices or from their home computers. They will be able to experience the theme world from personal based HMDs such as Oculus, Vive, or even Magic Leap. The important aspect is that the participants would not be required to participate from an immersive theme world arena. However, they will not be able to Physically participate. They will contribute to the experience as interactors or non-physical participants. Folks who participate at this level may not be able to physically participate in an iMyth arena. They may simply wish to not interact as deeply; metaphorically wading into the water instead of diving in.

    The third option is to participate passively. Restricted once again to a mobile device or home computer, the participant will not be required to employ a visualization device, (HMD), but could view the activities of the theme world from their phone screen or monitor. The view options of this passive perspective are unlimited. However, the amount of interactivity and immersion are also the least. This perspective is for folks who wish to watch on the sidelines and sample the experience before venturing in deeper.

    Festivals such as Boom Town are an inspiring goal of where immersive theme worlds can get to. Since iMyth experience can exist on all three levels of interactivity and immersion, they might actually be able to become something even larger. This of course will need to be explored further once immersive theme worlds start gaining traction.

  • ‘Jack Ryan’ Most Immersive Theme World Experience Ever?

    ‘Jack Ryan’ Most Immersive Theme World Experience Ever?

    Although I did not attend, this year at San Diego’s Comic-Con is an attraction like no others. In conjunction with the Amazon Series, ‘Jack Ryan’, is a 60,000 square foot immersive VR Themeworld experience. This thing is huge. A crew from Media Monks, an immersive marketing firm from Holland,  worked for months to create this outrageous, location-based experience. You Go Guys!

    As mentioned before, the experience takes place over a 60,000 square foot lot at the San Diego Comic-con. Participants done a backpack computer complete with Oculus VR headset, a climbing harness and motion control markers for hand and feet. During the experience, participants engage in gun fights, duck and cover to avoid fire, Get dropped in from a helicopter (Something I never thought of), escape from a zip line, walk a plank and drive a motion controlled vehicle. These guys pulled out all the stops! This is fantastic and I’m glad someone was able to pull it off if anything as a proof of concept.

    I don’t know much about Media Monks. However, their headquarters are in Amsterdam and they have offices around the world. The realm of immersive marketing is so big I have trouble wrapping my head around the scale and it is only getting bigger. If there any ambitious young people not certain to place all their eggs in the film or games basket may want to consider going into this growing field.

    Business-wise I see this as a marketing event sponsored by Amazon. Such practices are often employed by other production companies such as Lion’s Gate. So this experience is tied in with a major IP, taking place at the world’s largest geek’s fair. I’m sure this experience will do a great job demonstrating what could be done with VR immersive experience and hopefully open the floodgates for other future location-based attractions.

    As a foundation upon which to create a business model from I have my doubts. This is a very linear experience. Very few people, except for the die-hard Jack Ryan lovers, will want to go through this experience more than once. This is also a solo experience. The future of immersive experiences is dependent on collaborative experiences. Until the opportunity is given for participants to share the experience with others it will be a hard sell. Folks may argue that there is an interactor helping the participant through the experience. However, this interactor has no digital presence and is only concerned for getting the participant through the experience in the safest, fastest way while still adhering to the context of the themeworld. If the interactor had a digital presence and collaborated with the participant in fleshing out a unique story then folks would really fall in love with the adventure. Then of course there is the evil specter of throughput preventing this from being a commercially viable experience. I don’t know how many participants can be in the experience at one time but it does not look like many. The involvement of an interactor for each participant also drives up the cost of the experience itself. If an attraction such as this were in a for-profit facility then the throughput would have to be increased at least by tenfold or the cost of there experience would need to be staggering. This looks like a fantastic experience. However, would it warrant a $100 admission price?

    Overall, this is a very exciting and promising prototype. I wish I could be in San Diego to give this experience a try! Hopefully events such as this will continue to keep attracting the attention of the world and make immersive themeworld experience an expected component of our every day media.

  • Alien Zoo Opens to Positive Comments

    Alien Zoo Opens to Positive Comments

    Just last week, Dreamscape Immersive opened it Alien Zoo experience in Los Angeles. The opening was kind of quiet and it’s been somewhat hard to get information about the new location-based experience. Ian Hamilton of Upload VR was one of the lucky few to have gone through the experience. He writes about his experience in his article, Dreamscape’s Alien Zoo Creates A Sense Of Awe And Wonder.

    In the article he creates a compare and contrast to the Void’s Star Wars and Ghostbuster’s experience. He is very quick to note that the Void experiences few very much like shooter type video games where Alien Zoo feels somewhat different. Like The Void, Alien Zoo has the participant done backpack computers and Oculus headsets. They also put on foot and hand coverings. Withing the experience, the physical immersion is dramatically different. Participants can shake hands with each other, give each other high fives, exchange objects and even physically interact with denizens of the story world. The avatars do a very good job tracking the participants’ positions. Colliding with each other and objects in the scene are not a problem.

    The article admits there are still problems with the experience especially with story near the end of the experience. However, he did not feel these distractions were deal-breakers. The new media format is still in its infancy and has far to grow.

    If you are in the Los Angeles area and have $20 burning a hole in  your pocket, make sure to check out this new attraction and be part of the evolution.

  • iMyth Post 4/29

    I figured I had better be documenting iMyth progress as things move along.

    I suppose I have been lax in doing so:

    • 4/25 – My Vive arrives via Fed-Ex. No one is home to receive it :(.
    • 4/26 – AT the end of the work day, I high-tail it to the Fed-Ex depot and pick up my Vive.
      • Yeah!
    • 4/27 – After spending the bulk of the day with class and students, I start focusing on installing my Vive. It does not work. I put together an impassioned message to Vive Support explaining my dilemma.
    • 4/28 – Muchos meetings all morning. AFter getting back from the meetings, I install the Vive on the Galley PC. It works! The Vive experience is pretty awesome!
    • 4/29 – I try to apply the feedback I received from Vive Support. To make a long story short, my computer is not VR compatible. After all this time I thought it was :(. Boy do I look silly. I Guess that sort of explains why the Occulus refused to work on my machine as well. Bryant, the fello from CAH says my iMyth machine will be arriving from Alienware today. Gotta keep my fingers crossed.

  • Emotion and Rapport

    I was reading through my web pages this morning and two very similar articles came up. I had written neither as being significant enough to create a post for. However, when I realized these were two very different article dealing with similar issues it made me think of the relevance they will have in immersive experiences.

    The first of these was a video from the Oculus studio discussing the emotional relevance and importance of their new short called Henry. They discuss the importance of creating rapport with the audience and making them care about the protagonist. They further mention that this task is all the more important when dealing with VR. Because of VR’s immersive potential, audiences will demand a strong emotional connection with its characters.

    The second article was written by Matthew Code on the replayability of games. While he is primarily talking about games I could not help but think that replay is one of the primary motivations behind immersive VR experiences. Matthew writes about what he thought makes game replayable. While we would agree that the lighter more commedic the game is the more attractive it is to watch again. But He also goes on to explain that sometimes characters are just so interesting you want to immerse yourself in their existence.  There was the connection between the two articles.

    Neither of the articles really suggests how to do these things but identifies the need to have them present for an enriching, replayable experience. These will be some of the milestones we need to achieve when developing immersive theme-world experiences.

  • Smell-O-Vision Is Here!

    There has been a ton of VR activity the last couple of weeks. The Tech community is going crazy. Just as I had envisioned it years ago, the wave is breaking! With the seeming commercial success of one VR application; Occulus, Hololens, we will see an influx of money flowing to the technological development of the other sense.

    As expected, Smell-O-Viosn has made its footstamp.

    Although just a kickstarter, FeelReal is just the first of non-visual haptic feedback systems. There will be more for sure. I’ll need to dig deep into the Raconteur coffers and throw them a bone.

  • HTC Vive: Welcome to the fray!

    These are indeed exciting times!

    HTC Vive has just drop its hat into the VR ring with with HTC Vive; Valve’s HR headset:

    HTC Vive

    Not much is known about this headset but supposedly they will have a commercial version out by the end of the year. It sounds like it is a beefier, faster version of the Oculus Rift. Maybe Vive has solved some tracking issues too? We look forward to finding out.

    I have heard that Valve will be introducing the new headset at GDC this week. I look forward in having a hands-on demo!

    Also, in related news, I have just found out a site I have been frequenting lately, WEMO.IO,  is actually a VR company run by old associates, WEVR. They have just announced a partnership with Valve to be a development partner for their new headset. From the initial looks of it WEVR is foccussing on a suite of VR production tools as well as producing their own VR content.

    I’ll need to drop a few emails to what some of the old folks are up to. It’s re-assuring confirmation to know that the wave that has been building for the last few years is actually seen by other like-minded souls.

  • More Information about Magic Leap

    While the information has been slow in coming, the bread crumbs cluing us in to what’s going on at Magic Leap are starting to formulate.

    In this article by Rachel Metz for the MIT Technology Review, Magic Leap, we begin to start seeing the technology promised by Magic Leap. While most of the product is still in development, one can’t wonder how this technology will compete against Hololens by Microsoft. Both offer stereoscopic projection of images onto lenses embedded in a head mounted display.  Both of these technologies seem to lend themselves to AR applications. I still have questions how well it will work with full VR uses.

    I don’t want to be synical but I am still looking forward to full blown, fast and effective VR. Occulus appears to be the leader in this tech but still has far to go. In the realm if Interactive Storytelling, I still feel a full immersive experience is required to transport the user into an alternative story world. This technology is not without merit and I eagerly await its arrival. These are all great steps forward and the closer we can get the public moving towards the concepts of AR and VR the easier it will be to sell fully immersive Interactive Storytelling.

  • Oculus Story Studio

    I never knew about these guys until today but they really seem to be on to something. I used to be a huge Imagineering wannabe. I still am. But now I’m an Occulus Story Studio wannabe!

    Oculus Story Studio

    In their introductory video, they introduce many of the concepts dealing with immersive technologies and storytelling. I am so glad they are working on these problems. It’s not as easy as “jump on to Maya, create a short and toss on an Oculus headset.”  The craft of visual story telling needs to be re-invented. Techniques such as the camera cut are no longer valid tools. Creative editing is no longer at the disposal to the crafty film director. New devices and techniques must be generated to not only pull the audience into the story world but provide sufficient reward for exploration that will keep them coming back for more.

    Note that these new concepts are not quite fully “Interactive”. The audience has limited control of the camera but nothing else. In my hierarchy of interactivity, groups such as Oculus are crafting the Second and Third perspectives of the interactive storytelling experience. The first perspective still has even more hurdles and barriers to overcome. However, if the the second and third perspectives are mastered then they will provide the platform upon which the first perspective is built.

    Really exciting times!

  • Groovy Diagram from Oculus Explaining Why VR is Tough

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