VR Diaries: ‘Pearl Harbor’ Would Have Been Better in Another Medium
The overall virtual reality experience, “Pearl Harbor,” was lesser than my previous experiences. It felt educational instead of immersive, personal or thought-provoking. I feel that this was a failed VR story because I would have preferred watching it on another medium, like a television screen, or simply just going to the museum myself.
Regardless, the most powerful part was its easy-to-follow visual cues. I always knew where to look (especially in the museum), and the 360 view never felt like it was too much, because I had time to turn around and see what I needed to see without the scenes moving too quickly. It was very organized, which also might have taken away from it feeling realistic.
The most memorable part was the birds-eye-view shot, when I was under the plane, and it felt as if the plane was drifting and on fire. I didn’t actually feel like I was there, nor did I know what was going on, but visually, I thought the simulation was done well with the smoke spreading around me.
The weakest part was the lack of characters and actual footage of Pearl Harbor. I wish they had intimate stories of the event from real people and actual photographs, even if they may have disturbed the perfect resolution. Without these items, no empathy can be generated, especially from a recreation of an event that looked very produced and fake (an that is exactly what it was).
In terms of my technical experience, “Pearl Harbor” had the best resolution I’ve seen through VR thus far. But this shows that the quality is not the most important aspect of a piece — the storytelling is. I felt that the narrative was like a lecture, and there were too many distracting interruptions and advertising to ever feel fully compelled by the story. I found myself spacing out and not paying attention to the audio as well, especially in the museum where it felt very still and boring — again, I would have rather physically gone there myself.
I didn’t really feel any empathy or emotions — this was definitely because of its storytelling, by not putting enough focus on interviews. The only thing I experienced was a little bit of dizziness and nausea during the aerial plane shots.
I don’t particularly have any best practices to recommend from this piece, which is disappointing seeing that they clearly have access to great technology — the quality was fantastic, and if they would have invested more effort into everything else as they did the production of the piece, it could have been much better. I don’t recommend going back and forth from the museum and then trying to place you into a scene that is recreated, although I see what they were trying to do. It would have been valuable for them to have incorporated more live-action in some way.
I didn’t learn anything new about VR from this piece alone, except for the fact that there can be VR commercials (like the ones in this story) in the future — when the piece was interrupted by the advertisement, I was so thrown off. If I had the option, this is where I would have taken off my headset.
This piece, out of all of them, definitely didn’t make me want to take action in any way, to even tell a friend about it. Pearl Harbor is something that we all know, and this experience didn’t aid my knowledge or sentiments about it in any way, nor did it change my view of the subject matter. USA Today could definitely take some pointers from the New York Times in increasing their emotional and personal appeal, and stray away from a very commercialized production, as if they are trying to sell us something. I wanted a more documentary feel, with much more engaging characters and narration.
