Cinema’s gift is the ability to present a reshaped reality. VR promises to realize a reshaped reality directly

Since the creation of the first motion picture of a horse galloping, cinema has created a window into reality. Commissioned by Leland Stanford as an experiment into a horse’s gait, Cinema started as a scientific investigation of reality envisioned to discover a hidden secret. After 100 plus years of development, Cinema is now perfected to simultaneous recreate & bend reality.

Horse in Motion, Eadweard Muybridge, ca. 1886

Traditional cinema and virtual reality have always enjoyed a dependent relationship sharing at their core the manipulation of images to simulate a version of reality. Although Cinema has outpaced VR development, the invention of the smart phone has changed everything. Smart phones have greatly accelerated the development of small and inexpensive computing which has catapulted a myriad of dormant technologies from drones to VR headsets.

VR has greatly benefited from these developments as technology is rapidly approaching the promise of VR which is putting each and every one of us inside the cinema and able to create our own story…. Or in other words… Global Agency

The Hype around Global Agency in VR

Global agency is just a fancy way to communicate the idea of free will within a VR experience. Imagine a VR experience where the participant can change the story based on their interaction within the experience… this is Global Agency and it’s in limited supply in VR today. The reasons for this I’ve discussed at length in this video but in short it’s because traditional storytellers don’t have much practice in emergent narratives. We’re used to linear storytelling from an observant point of view. In my own work I’ve grappled with this by introducing branching and AI software to keep the participant in an Aristotelian like narrative.

The tricky part has been providing enough branching to yield the illusion of global agency without feeling the heavy hand of the AI software. The other more significant problem with this approach is that it requires emotional input from the viewer and the technology to achieve this isn’t mature yet. This is the reason why all interactive media is non emotional. We simply don’t have the tech yet to get our emotions into the experience and therefore we cannot emotionally personalize the story yet. This will all change in short time but until then what do we do? How do we convince the industry to invest when the hype of VR has not lived up to the promise?

 

Incremental innovation

It’s no secret there’s a content problem with VR.

• There’s an overemphasis on tech and not an equal investment in content
• The content is not good enough because our greatest storytellers are treading lightly until a financial return is foreseeable …i.e..{next bullet}
• Hollywood has no monetary incentive to get involved yet
• Available content is light and equipment is expensive

This environment is ripe for yet another Silicon Valley disruption but the tech can’t do it alone. We need good content, standardization and inexpensive VR hardware. Incremental content and hardware innovation is how we’ll get there.

Hardware innovation

We need mobile phone based motion tracking VR. mic drop! We are close… can’t wait.
We also need non invasive eye, body and sweat tracking. This is father out but I’m hopeful.

Content innovation

What types of pop VR content will we have in the future? Nobody can predict the future but here are hypotheses we must test.

VR social competition

Corollary: Reality Television
Agency: limited/global
Content description: Competitive games where participants can compete virtually. Spectators can watch on traditional TV or attend in VR. The competitions are goal oriented and video game like with real monetary awards.

Docu – VR

Corollary: Documentary Cinema/TV
Agency: limited
Content description: Tour guide guides participant through experience. A host guides the participant through the experience with conversations and teleports to relevant scenes where you are free to explore.

Social Simulation Emergent Narratives

Corollary: Episodic Television
Agency: global
Content description: Interactive Theater like where participant can choose to be the protagonist or supporting character. Experience episodes will be non serialized and multiple endings possible. User intent is triggered by experience manager AI.

Holographic Conference

Corollary: Skype/Facetime
Agency: limited
Content description: Ability to make a call and see a holographic representation of your friends. Ability to phone conference and select virtual meeting places. Tour virtual meeting places as a group.

Live Seat VR

Corollary: Live Television/Sports/Concerts
Agency: limited (local but may be able to change seat/position)
Content description: Experience a live event as though you were there. Enjoy it in real time and bring a friend.

Room Scale Social Simulation Emergent Narratives and Games

Corollary: Cinema
Agency: Collective Global
Content description: Interactive Theater and game-like. A place to go to experience high quality room scale VR without having to purchase the latest equipment.
This is all just the beginning! As a content creator it’s exciting to play in the sandbox to discover what combinations will work. Stay tuned. This is a once in a lifetime occurrence and it’s exciting to be apart of it.