Tweet The Future of Cinema - A Virtual Reality Primer

From Digital Photography Review:

http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6386731564/primer-what-is-vr-and-why-should-photographers-care

Jim Gettys

From what I know about VR (probably very little) - it has up to now only involved graphics and not real moving images? If it did have real imagery - and at a 4K or even 8K resolution, it'd probably negate the need for any of us to travel anywhere to "see the sights". My wicked mind has also thought about porn presented this way - but only momentarily.

I don't think the storyteller's role in VR movie
creation is going away. I think it is another way of telling a story.

VR can be used to join someone else in their environment
live while being able to see that person's environment 360 degrees.
I have even seen prototype Go-Pro style VR cameras.

I wonder what Abel Gance or Walt Disney would have done with VR?

Street View, from Google Maps, it's not so big deal after get used.

VR is going to be amazing. It's going to be a new format in the way that movies weren't stage plays (once the medium was figured out). Theater still exists even though we have movies and TV, and both of those will still exist along side VR movies. And game VR will be yet another format.

One of the things that needs to happen first is increased resolution. Right now they're half HD-- literally splitting an HD screen in half. So what you get, as cool as it is, is the effect of looking at an LCD screen with a magnifying glass. Once it goes to a better resolution, like AT LEAST 2k per eye, it'll be unbelievable (or, rather, totally believable). Next is figuring out how to tell a story in the new medium. It requires a new approach, just as movies required more than merely filming a stage play. And I think that's going to be much tougher than it was for movies. Partially because a big part of movie grammar is for pointing the audience's eyes to a specific place, whereas the selling point of VR is that you are free to look anywhere. It's interesting to me right now that I don't know how to make it work; this is what it must have been like for people before the innovations of Porter and Griffith (etc.), close-ups, editing, etc. Those are things no one could have imagined before. Right now I look at VR and think there's no way to do an equivalent of close-ups and editing; it would feel weird and take you out of the reality. But I'm absolutely sure that someone will figure it out, and then it'll seem obvious and totally natural, just like the movie grammar we're so used to. And just as there are some stories that work best as plays, and some as movies, and some as TV series, there will be stories that work best as VR.

VR is going to be amazing. It's going to be a new format in the way that movies weren't stage plays (once the medium was figured out). Theater still exists even though we have movies and TV, and both of those will still exist along side VR movies. And game VR will be yet another format.

How does it work? I have a hazy picture of room size screens specializing in daytime soaps, a la Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, or Star Trek's benighted holosuites, where you interact with the story (until it inevitably goes terribly wrong).

VR is going to be amazing. It's going to be a new format in the way that movies weren't stage plays (once the medium was figured out). Theater still exists even though we have movies and TV, and both of those will still exist along side VR movies. And game VR will be yet another format.

How does it work? I have a hazy picture of room size screens specializing in daytime soaps, a la Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, or Star Trek's benighted holosuites, where you interact with the story (until it inevitably goes terribly wrong).

I've tried the freebie Google cardboard box, which goes over your eyes like goggles and works with your smartphone. It's kind of like those old ViewMasters, only you can tilt your head up or down, and turn around 360 degrees. There's no sense of screen per se, instead it's an all-enveloping view. You never reach an edge or end. (Google and Bing sometimes do something similar on their home pages, like a mountain view that you can rotate for 360 degrees.) Really neat for about 30 seconds. Then it's disorienting, especially if you try to walk, and finally boring. Just like ViewMasters.

The newer formats use hand controls to allow you to interact the way you would with a Wii. So I guess it will be tennis, rifles, and light sabers first.

I will be long gone before they figure out how to fully exploit it.

Wearing a headpiece is a big sticking point, just as it is with 3D.

I'll wait for the implantable eyepiece. (Oh snap, I'll be dead by then.)

Ella Fitzgerald will ask, "is it real or is it Holorex?"

Rick

I had read that Phillips in the Netherlands were developing a 3D television receiver that did not one to wear special spectacles in order to view it. That was a few years back now and I have not heard anything further? I suppose that with the general disinterest shown in 3D television, nothing proceeded further. However, if we jump straight into VR, then maybe there will be a rethink?

I had a cellphone that could show 3D images
without 3D glasses..
I had to tilt it at a certain angle to view the 3D
image. It did a decent job for the complicated task
it performed. A large flat panel tv
(at least the prototypes) would require a very limited
angle to view the images in 3D.

Immersive 3D will only improve with each generation of
headsets. I have seen prototypes of body suits that make you
feel as if your are being struck with any choice of weapon,
bullet included. Face gear, also, that simulate face punching for
VR boxing.

...Immersive 3D will only improve with each generation of
headsets. I have seen prototypes of body suits that make you
feel as if your are being struck with any choice of weapon,
bullet included... .

I just can''t wait for this!