Virtual Reality: Shtick or Swim?
Remember 3D? I do, I remember it like it was yesterday, the three-dimensional stereoscopic film that was meant to enhance the illusion of depth perception in movies was all the rave for a large part of the noughties with countless movies released with the tag in big bold letters, “iMAX 3D”, films like Superman Returns, Alice in Wonderland, Clash of the Titans and the most successful 3D film to date, James Cameron’s Avatar, all had 3D as the crux of their appeal.
For the short time it was relevant, 3D was somewhat popular. However ,with conflicting reports of people suffering migraines, increasingly exorbitant prices of the tickets and losing and having to pay for those damned glasses every time you found yourself in the cinema, the momentum soon came to a halt . 3D television has since been attempted but that has become nothing more than a gimmick now.
With all this in mind, it would be no surprise that some are cynical about the latest push for Virtual Reality. 3D and virtual reality share an almost identical history, both are very impressive technologies that have been around for a long time, since the 80’s, and are now being dubbed as the next best thing in self-immersion. So what’s different about VR, how can the news industry and gaming industry that its most prevalent in, ensure that VR is here to stay.
Well, founder of Hear Be Dragons, a production studio that specialises in VR film-making, Chris Milk seems to have the answer. Speaking at SXSW (South By South West) in 2015, he had this to say:
“The first thing to recognise is that this is not film.
It’s not about retrofitting movie theatres with VR headsets.
This is a new medium. It’s an unwritten canvas. People can figure out what a story looks like and an audience can see if they like it. It’s a really unique time.
We will make movies in VR but that isn’t the final form in storytelling by any means.
The frame is a manufactured structure. But it isn’t the way we experience life.
You experience stories every day and you never think, this would be a better day if we had a rectangle telling me where to look.
It’s going to take thousands of artists and directors to figure it out. That’s how things evolve. One person in a lab doesn’t crack the case of storytelling.”
Lofty ambitions indeed, ambitions that were echoed by Sarah Jones, a former TV correspondent at GMTV, who has now become a pioneer and VR expert in journalism, “VR transports you to another time and place and forces you to be part of another world. That makes it really powerful for a whole range of industries. Gaming in VR has been round for years and is still the dominating industry but now there’s great applications for teaching and learning in VR and also for news as it allows a deeper understanding and a change in perspective, which is a really powerful tool.”
Once again, storytelling is the medium in which industry insiders believe VR should thrive in, much like 3D, and there is no better place than gaming or journalism for that to take place.
VR has really taken off in the gaming world however, the constant need for upgrades and diverse experiences with gamers and their console of choice, means that we are starting to see the 2 leading gaming companies ,Xbox and PlayStation ,push out their own forms of virtual reality.
Playstation was the first to take the plunge, releasing their PS4 VR in October 13 2016. Even with the need for an upgraded version of the PS4 console for the technology to work, just 4 months after release, the PS4 VR has been sold 915,000 times, a great success, but how long will it last?
What’s VR like for the gamers though? I spoke to avid gamer Jordan Murphy who’s had a go on the mind bending reality altering system, “I think VR is the next evolution for game development, unlike failed products in the past, like Xbox’s Kinect, or PSmove. VR gives the player a new dimension within the game world. I’ve already seen what it can do when playing games like the Resident Evil 7 and with more time, I think VR will become more common.”
Despite his glowing review of the system, Jordan noted that he’d already seen some flaws with the time spent with it, some flaws that shared similarities with the physical effects 3D had on your body and wallet, “Saying that though, there’s some flaws, I’ve already seen or felt, first of all motion sickness, because you are in the world, your eyes can’t look away from the screen, you are basically trapped in that world. Another problem comes with the health and safety aspects; people with epilepsy or a history of heart conditions need to be warned. Price is also a problem, like any new innovation, the asking price is expensive, and I can see that putting a lot of people off.”
Journalism has also began to immerse itself into the waters of the bright blue prospects of VR, major news organisations stateside and in the UK, such as The New York Times, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and NBC News have all produced top quality content using VR to provide an immersive, innovative and different experience for their audience, with great success.
Cost must be an important factor for the content producers also, as great as the VR experiences by the organisations were, it can’t have been cheap. VR expert Sarah Jones explained:“Cost depends on output and scale. Big VR stories, designed to be viewed in a high-end headset, cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. I’ve spent days watching things render and export. File sizes are huge. However, social 360 with tilt and rotate on social networks, and now with Periscope 360, allow news transitions to experiment with consumer grade cameras that self stitch and allow for an experience.”
Sarah’s comments tells me that VR can be very beneficial for the big news and gaming organisations that have the money to produce high-end content, but the ones with a smaller budget will have to make do with the cheaper, less impressive version of 360 2D video for now, something that is far from ideal.
So virtual reality, shtick or swim? Will this exciting new way of storytelling fall victim to its predecessor, will we be sat here in 5 years time writing and talking about it like an expensive fad that came and went, or will we be watching exclusive footage of a police raid on our headset filly immersed along with other commuters on your way to work looking like a utopia of Cyclops’.
3D didn’t work in the film industry because of its over saturation and lack of time and effort put into it to ensure the consumer received the best experience possible. Something that the gaming and news industry are attempting with VR, reading about VR and speaking to people behind it, I can’t help but think this will be nothing but successful due to the creators, sheer love and dedication to it, Sarah Jones’ parting comment left this impression on me especially:
“Most reactions are “wow”. It’s always great to see first reactions where people get to be transported to another place. Very few people have felt sick and that’s partly down to picking the right environments and the right content and we, as VR makers and creators, need to take responsibility for that.
It’s not a gimmick if it’s used correctly and for the right reasons. You don’t use VR for everything, you use it to enhance an understanding of a story and to deepen connections, allowing an audience to experience a news environment.”
