The First Time I wasn’t Impressed by Virtual Reality
I can’t state enough how much I love virtual reality. It’s almost like I’m in the movie Avatar, and transported to a new world. Through the Google Cardboard headset I was able to go to places like war-torn Syria, and the streets of NYC. . Google Cardboard is a headset that you can buy for you smart phone. It works as a cheap way for people to experience Virtual reality and there are specific apps for the product.
The Cardboard stories were immersive and were able to give perspective on places I probably never will travel to. In each video I’m given a 360 view of whatever I’m watching. It’s an amazing experience, but as Chris Milk said “Talking about virtual reality is like dancing about architecture.” I could go on for hours about how great using the cardboard is, but you wouldn’t know what I’m talking about until you try it your self.
Despite all my praise for virtual reality, it didn’t take long for me to find a VR project that I hated. ABC’s video Inside Syria VR on Jaunt had the “honor” of being that project.
Inside Syria is literally just a tour of art and architecture from Syria. It’s a “story” that doesn’t need virtual reality to have an impact. I think it would’ve been better to see these works of art through a slide show online. Even a go-pro like camera would be better, as the reporter could easily make us focus on whatever he wants us to see. Instead VR makes the story confusing, as I can’t always focus on the same thing the reporter wants us to.
It doesn’t help that the video quality in “Inside Syria” is extremely blurry. So you can’t even really see these artworks in the video it self! This might be a problem with the Jaunt app itself, because I had the same issue with the majority of the videos in the app. Maybe Jaunt doesn’t use the most high tech cameras, and the videos itself suffer for it. I can see the whole “let’s take a tour of some famous artwork or museum” being really effective in VR in the future, but not with the video quality that ABC has been using. It takes you out of the experience.
I usually give leeway to VR projects because of how new the technology is, but it almost seems like ABC didn’t bother to really try to use it. I honestly felt like I was watching ABC do a trail run on virtual reality.
In the video we are shown this tour of Syria by a reporter. Throughout the tour he literally just walks around the 360 camera and points to things. It’s not a real “wow” moment. I don’t feel immersed and once again, I feel like I’m watching a tech test of VR by the reporter. He also makes it confusing by saying things like “and to your left you can see”. This wouldn’t be a problem in a normal video, but in virtual reality I could be looking at a completely different direction as the reporter and not know what it is he’s talking about.
There’s something exciting about being the first one to use a new technology. However in the case of ABC, being first in virtual reality wasn’t a good thing. I hope that ABC will learn from their mistakes from this video and start to produce better quality virtual reality experiences.
