What I think about VR, AR & 360Videos
How long have we been talking about Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, 360 videos related technologies? The movie industry introduced it to the masses in 1992 with the movie “The Lawnmower Man” inspired most likely by Disney’s “Tron” (1982); and from that moment many other movies and visions about “how these technologies should be experienced” have tried to redefine our expectations.
In the last two years the investments in augmented reality and visor technology for VR / V360 have dramatically increased. Think about companies like Magic Leap that raised more than $1.4 billion to develop a new head-mounted virtual retinal display, Oculus Rift acquired by Facebook for $2 Billions; and companies like Apple, that in the last 18 months have acquired more than acquired more of 5 companies, and hired university professors to move forward their VR research
All this money is aggressively pushing forward design & product research to create a mass market experience solution and drive the entire market to the next level.
We are still a few steps away from having a simple and effective experience solution for the mass market, but we are moving in the right direction to soon provide systems able to teleport users in virtual digital environments.
But are all the current limitations all about technology? No.
Aside from technology, the other big issue is the storytelling experience model. All this virtual experiential media content changes all the rules we know about content design, in terms of format, accessibility, senses involved, interaction models and of course in this new scenario, the user’s expectation.
The big questions are: “how to use and how to tell stories through this new media?”
In the market recently we have a few interesting early explorations, excluding the basic sample provided by Oculus, specifically in terms of gaming.
One standout is provided by New York Times. Their dedicated app is the immersive experience called NYT-VR which provides 360 videos of their editorial journalistic projects like the “Islam Pilgrimage to the Mecca”, “Man on Spire (Freedom Tower of NYC)”, “10 Shoots Across the Border ( Mexico )”, “The Displaced (Syria)”, etc…
They have started to explore different storytelling models to create an engaging experience, through immersive clips, descriptive voice-overs, short clips and soft transitions.
They definitely approach this work better than any other I’ve seen recently in terms of storytelling, but how many documentary photographers or storytelling designers say,
“…this medium still provides only an experience like spectator but is going to be missed (or lost) the author scope make the audience testimonial of the story…” — ( Aldo Soligno)
In effect, the moment the user consumes this new medium through a flat screen or a head-mounted display, the expectation in terms of interaction and consumption of the content changes drastically, in a new hybrid (sensorial, interactive, immersive) environment for all to explore.
Another interesting experiment is made by a company called Within (the same company that provides the technology to the NYT VR App).They are exploring storytelling and interaction models of this new medium for entertainment content and in particular recently introduced a special companion experience for the popular TV show “Mr. Robot”.
Google has also explored this side more strongly producing an entire short movie for the VR Platform call Google Spotlight Stories. The movie is a sci-fi story about aliens landing on earth called “HELP”, which tries to re-define rhythms and cinematography techniques for the movie industry.
Unclear ‘Design guide”
The current limitation we have to design appropriate content for this new medium is the methodology and the way we tell and interact with the stories. Since these experiences are ‘personal’ and provide basic interaction with the content we should be able to generate not only a passive show, but a participative & collaborative virtual world, where ‘interactions’ are part of the story.
In this way, I think we have a lot to learn from what brilliant people did in the ’80s defining a new way of storytelling: a constructive method call SCUMM (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUMM) {Geek insight}
Opportunities
The opportunities in the market at this point are vast, not only for the technology side but also in the experience and storytelling approach of this new medium.
Technology should solve the problem of the limited vision area, quality of images, interaction model and, since this display device is considered a wearable device, define simple products to use and dress, that are not heavy and not invasive.
Storytellers should be able to envision a new way to tell their story out of the box, in a new context, with new scope, goals and user expectation.
This is the exciting part to be in a new path of sharing stories.
