Trends Forecast №1: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
As far as forecasts go, when it comes to VR and AR, if we were predicting warm weather and sunshine, summer has already arrived.
VR and AR top the list because of the seemingly endless opportunities they present to storytellers and media designers, to transport us to new environments, real and imagined, and overlay our immediate surroundings with digital content and information. VR has been lauded for its potential to foster empathy; where before, we’ve been able to follow the journey of a protagonist, on the page or on the screen, in these new immersive experiences, we become the protagonist, which gives us the opportunity to step into someone else’s shoes like never before. Imagine looking down at your hands, only to realize that they belonged to another gender, or another race. Being trapped in a solitary confinement cell. Witnessing the world through the fragmented visual static of being visually impaired. Or, soaring through the sky, arms outstretched like an eagle, controlling your flight by moving your head.
VR and AR also push designers to rethink the way audiences engage and interact with their stories. With less reliance on a mouse, a keyboard, or even a controller, new opportunities arise for intuitive interactions that mimic how we engage naturally with the world around us, though gaze, motion and gestures.
Those interactions have narrative implications, too. When you are immersed inside of a story, as opposed to watching it from the outside, all of a sudden, where you look, and who or what you look at, takes on an additional layer of meaning, as social and interpersonal dynamics become an additional layer of the interactive experience.
The massive success of Pokémon Go hints at (in a very loud whisper) the appeal of AR. As a panelist at a recent We Are Wearables event on AR and VR said, “we like it here.” In other words, as intrigued as we are by the opportunity VR affords to transport us to new worlds, we also really like our backyards, parks and neighborhoods.
The incredible potential of AR is the ability to bring magic into our lives with hybrid experiences that let us explore and engage with our immediate surroundings in new ways.
And that means, possibly more than ever before, story is everywhere.
