2016 Is The Year We Say a Proper Hello to Virtual Reality — Televised Revolution
In all likelihood, 2016 will be the year that you try virtual reality for the first time and start thinking about it in the context of your own life. As the sort of person who is reading Televised Revolution, there’s a strong chance that you already own a VR headset, even if it is just a Google Cardboard. But for most people 2016 will be the year that they are properly introduced to the world-changing potential of virtual reality.
VR will factor heavily into what we’ll be talking about at Televised Revolution moving forward. In the same way that the conversation on the site moved in its initial years from broadcast TV to incorporate discussion on torrents and then to streaming video services like Netflix, Virtual Reality is going to be a big part of what we’re consuming as televisual consumers moving forward.
As we launch into 2016, it’s worth keeping in mind that virtual reality is in its absolute infancy. There is limited access to the platforms at a general consumer level, content creators are still dipping their toes into the digital waters to get a feel for what works, what leads to an awful experience, and what users will embrace into their lives.
This early discovery period is going to be short-lived. Huge global brands are investing into VR in a significant way right now as it is very clear that it will have a most profound impact on not just our content consumption, but in our work lives, social engagements, and our core understanding of ourselves and others as digital environments truly merge with digital.
Skeptical that the world will change rapidly due to access to sophisticated virtual reality platforms? Consider the release of this in 2007:
The iPhone began a smartphone revolution that put a computer into the hands of users globally. Regardless of computer literacy, users lives have been transformed by the immediate access to information, services, mapping, and communications. The world is a fundamentally different place now because of the proliferation of smart phones. It happened quickly and fluidly. VR is the next big technology shift on that level.
BUT HOW SOON IS THIS HAPPENING, REALLY?
Really, really soon. Today you’re considering your own life. You don’t own a VR device. Your tech-passionate buddy used one at a gaming expo, but doesn’t yet own one. A guy you kinda know on Facebook has an Oculus developer kit.
But it’s not years away. Today in Australia you can buy the Samsung Gear VR for $158.99. Powered by the Facebook-owned Oculus platform, it requires users to download some apps and slide a Samsung phone into the Gear VR and you’re ready to get started — be aware, there are only a handful of compatible Samsung handsets that will work with the Gear VR. With a relatively low cost barrier to entry, it is quite feasible that your average everyday person can start experimenting with VR in this early phase of the development cycle.
Tomorrow, Oculus will launch pre-orders for their Oculus Rift product, a VR headset that won’t require a smart-phone to power it.
Later this year we will see Sony release its Playstation VR platform, which is significantly more sophisticated than the 360 degree videos that most rudimentary VR offers. A 360 degree video offers an immersive, but passive experience while the Playstation VR will enable users to interact with the video environment around them.
Did you visit a toy store over Christmas? You might have noticed one of the big-selling items this year was the revised Viewmaster. Gone is the dorky wheel of slides that kids used to look at. In its place was a virtual reality experience that relied on using mum and dad’s smartphone. For just $49.99.
IT’S ABOUT MORE THAN JUST GAMES
Video games are the first application that many of us think of when initially considering VR, but that will really be just a small part of what your experience will entail. VR is really going to be about experiences.
Live Performance — Visit your local arthouse cinema on the weekend and you’ll see sessions for international theatre performances being live streamed into cinemas. Already viewers are positioned in the best seat in the house while watching world class plays and opera performance. It is not a reach at all to consider music venues, boutique theatre spaces, conferences, and stand-up comedy bars selling tickets to virtual attendees.
Global Tourism — Putting the VR helmet on can take a user anywhere in the world. Right now, the best access is through a rudimentary port of the Google Maps street view service. It’s clunky, but you can today use Google Cardboard and find yourself standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. It’s not exactly the same as being there, but it’s an immersive experience nonetheless.
VR tourism breaks down the economic restrictions that does stop many people from traveling. Also benefiting will be those with physical impairments that makes mobility difficult.
Tele-presence — The flow on effects of VR will be huge. From a practical day-to-day impact, consider how improved the ability for tele-presence employment will be. Today you have a small number of workers who routinely work from home. While email and teleconferencing software makes this easier, it’s still not an adequate replacement for the benefits derived from working alongside team members in an office each day. VR meetings and other similar engagements each day has the potential to radically shift the way that many of us work. Not only does this have great work-life balance potential for staff, but it will be a boon for small business owners for whom office rent is a significant expense. The flow-on effect from this is fewer cars on the road commuting, less people seeking lunch in cities, etc.
While all of this is pretty cool, the real disruption is based on the idea that:
IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE
There is a big reason Facebook bought VR platform Oculus for $2 billion. There is a massive overlap between Facebooks objectives and VR’s capabilities — it connects people. Like a Facebook Group or comment thread, VR has the potential to bring friends and family together in a virtual space to talk and share. Furthermore, it establishes Facebook as the platform that can enable friends to meet up in virtual spaces to see a band, discuss kale recipes, knit, or watch TV together.
Social engagement is the big use-case for virtual reality. As with all new technologies, undoubtedly pornography will play a huge role in the progression of the technology (with obvious uses for surrogates, fantasy fulfillment, and dildonics play), but most people will be buying VR units to replace the weekly phone call to mum and to catch up with interstate friends for a coffee.
I LIKE WATCHING TV. WILL I LIKE THIS?
In recent years television has begun to look a lot more like film, while mainstream cinema has adopted many of the serialised elements of television. At the same time, video games have been aping many of the visual storytelling techniques of film, adding elements of interactivity through the narrative. The well-regarded 2014 game The Last of Us is an excellent example of just how successfully games and traditional film-like narratives can be blended together to create a highly engaging and emotionally satisfying gaming experience.
VR will blend all of these experiences together, while playing to the strengths of what VR can offer.
The natural assumption is that gaming will be huge in VR. And that makes sense with most games already employing a full 360 environment for characters to move around in. But it’s important not to discount the effect that VR will have on what we expect TV to look and feel like today.
A really interesting execution of VR video came from Discovery who released a Google Cardboard app called Discovery VR. The app offers several experiences, such as building a fire with Lee Stroud from their series Survivorman, swimming with elephants by way of their award winning documentary series Racing Extinction, and washing gold with the team from Gold Rush.
One of the more compelling videos is entitled On The Board With A Big Wave Pro, which you can watch as a 360 degree video HERE. As you can see in the video, surf pro Kyle Thiermann shows us how to catch some waves. Not only does he guide you on how to determine how to choose a great wave, but he actually takes you out on his board with you. It’s a passive experience, but nonetheless compelling. It’s not much of a reach to see how a tutorial video like this can be re-engineered to serve as part of a factual series like Bondi Rescue.
VR is not like the launch of 3D televisions. Where that was merely an exercise by TV manufacturers to shift more units and revive interest in high end TV’s as pressure was being felt by smart TV platforms they couldn’t control and the increasing value of low-end brands, virtual reality actually offers a meaningful benefit to how we can engage with storytelling.
Of course, VR is not a one for one swap with television. The entire way that a TV (and film) narrative is constructed will be thoroughly upended by VR. Already developers have found that fixed moving cameras in VR leave users feeling sick, so a full 360 degree experience in which movement is governed by the user is a must. And with a 360 degree viewing experience, that means there are greater challenges with lighting and set design. Also, unlike TV or film, there can be no edits.
A users attitude when putting on VR goggles against just plonking oneself down on the couch is also wildly different. A user comes to VR from a position of belief, rather than the disbelief that TV immediately engenders. Consider the TV experience — you are in a lounge room (usually) on a couch as you stare at a rectangle against a wall while dealing with multiple distractions and the general artifice that one associates with a TV production. It takes considerable attentive consumption by viewers to be able to enter the fugue state needed to be fully immersed in a TV show. A VR viewer, however, starts viewing from an immediate position of belief — they don’t need to adjust their mindset mid-show to be lulled into a state of believing what they are looking at.
VR is set to be something entirely different to what television offers. And while some viewers will be seeking passive viewing experiences, it is going to be difficult to fully justify sitting in front of the TV watching an episode of Q&A when a viewer can instead put on their VR goggles and actually be in the audience.
