Postcards from the VR Arcade

Virtual reality directors at the Tribeca Film Festival are blazing a path to the future of storytelling

Unceded Territories, about indigenous tribes and colonialism, asked participants to don some unusual VR headgear. (Photo: Lance Ulanoff)

It was not supposed to be a nice day. The forecast called for clouds, rain, but the sky was blue and sunny, the air sharp, if a little cool.

It’s the kind of climate that makes it hard to tear yourself away for a sojourn in the virtual world.

With the sun still warming my face, I wandered down Manhattan’s Varick St to the Tribeca Film Festival and with one last glance at a welcoming sun, I headed for the Virtual Arcade.

I’ve spent a lot of time using VR headsets from Facebook’s Oculus, Google, Sony, and others, often focusing more on the quality of the headgear than the experience. This time would be different. Tribeca has assembled almost a dozen different immersive and often narrative virtual reality films and experiences.

There’s a lot of interest in virtual reality storytelling — at least from film makers.

A few weeks prior, I got a preview of a short POV, sci-fi action film by Robert Rodriguez, called The Limit. The roughly 20-minute VR movie, which I watched on an Oculus Go, stars Michelle Rodriguez and is about augmented humans trying to, I think, uncover some sort of conspiracy. In it, you are one of the characters, which gives you freedom to look around as…