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Zero Point: The First 360-Degree Movie Made For the Oculus Rift
Zothecula writes "The Oculus Rift has carved out a sizable reputation for itself among gamers, but virtual reality has many applications beyond playing video games. Now one production studio is preparing to release the first movie shot specifically to be watched through the VR headset. The upcoming film, called Zero Point, will focus on the history and development of virtual reality technology, while allowing viewers the freedom to look around each scene as the movie progresses."
3D movies, where you are not static no more. I wonder if limitation is there, will it be Occulus only thing?
7,500 units == sizable?
...other then to generate publicity or to give the small number of developer kit owners something to blog about.
When are they actually going to ship the consumer version of the Oculus Rift?
The kickstarter was in August 2012 and all they seem to have done since then is spend kickstarter / VC money and repeatedly redesign thier product as newer technologies become available / cheaper. Still no date for actually shipping a product.
A chance to see what the gaffer actually does to the best boy with the key grip.
There are tons off 360' movies made successfully. Adding a top and sorta bottom view isn't new either. Wake me up when you really can move around the scene and not just pan around. I like how the first image is of a chicks ass... Very appropriate.
I doubt that this 360 film technology would support positional tracking of head movements, which seems to be a major benefit for immersivness in new version of Rift - plus not controlling your movements might be also quite confusing. Glyph is probably better tailored for viewing rail-road movies where you can just move your screen around.
_Real_ breakthrough would be to mix movies and game/rendering engines and let film render on the fly. This way, all the positional tracking/limited movement control etc could be achieved. Probably graphic power/distribution size limits might be a showstoppers right now, but maybe in future... Interactive content could be added there almost for free (not that I think it is that good idea for movies).
Still, even for single center of view, 360 degrees video, size has to be immense? We are talking about probably 8 HD movies stiched together on just horizontal angle - might easily require 20-40 full HD videos to cover entire sphere. Multiply by two because of 3d, let's assume 60 times requirements of HD stream. Compression might be better for this size of video, but stil... Are we talking about swapping bluray each 2-4 minutes?
Of course, they can as well just do a 2000x2000 pixels for entire sphere and let us stare at interpolated blur. Which they will most probably do, which means it is nothing else that "let's be there first without solving any real issues" ploy.
Seems odd that neither the summary didn't link to the demonstration video player on Condition One (it's kinda slow to load, and the first couple of scenes aren't '3D'). As you can see in the 2D version, it's just playing a 2D video on a virtual curved screen that extends half way around the user's viewpoint; that's enough to look pretty damned cool in the later scenes with crowds and on an escalator though.
Worth noting all the scenes there involved the viewpoint remaining either static or very predictably and slowly moving in a single direction, so perhaps this movie won't have quite so many barf moments as some of the demo games out there (doing a barrel roll in a spaceship game demo did me in, so I don't think being shaky-cam '3D' videos are going to work for me).
Hasn't there been 360 movies before? There's "America the Beautiful" that used to be at Disneyland and I guess was at a world's fair before that. There were also plenty of 360 videos from things like go-pro and attachments for iPhone/Android etc...
It seems to me (but maybe I'm missing it) like it's not going to be cool until it's actually a 3D movie and by 3D movie I mean rendered in real time so that you can not just look but also translate, at least a little, through the environment. That seemed to be what Abrash was mentioning in his talk. Movies are old, "Presence" is new. "Presence" requires real time rendering.
I mean it would be really scary if you felt like you were right in the middle of a bunch of college kids who are about to be murdered.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Exactly what sizable reputation has it created among gamers, exactly? Sure, most have probably heard of it, but I don't think it has much of any reputation, good or bad, yet. This is just yet another Slashvertisement.
I mean it would be really scary if you felt like you were right in the middle of a bunch of college kids who are about to be murdered.
Yes, it would be really scary to be right in the middle of a bunch of college kids, and yes, they would be about to be murdered.
I'm still waiting for a movie that allows the viewers' choices to affect it. The technology is here for home video, and, if it ever took off, it wouldn't take much for purely theaters to build 3-4 button "voting consoles" into the armrests or something (as conventional film would not work).
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This will not be for any serious gamer any time soon. I want this day to happen! I know it's at least 5-10 years off before i can look around & be inside battlefield6 or some new MMO.
-As long as VR is ready by the time I'm an old man..
360 Edition of Dragonboobs, er, Game of Thrones!
Oh noes! Daenerys' clothes have come off, again, leaving only a blond wig. Now you get to choose between a boob shot and an ass shot. Quick, look down! You almost stepped on Tyrion Lannister.
Can't they retarget those IMAX movies for use with the Oculus.
I know it's not 360 degrees, but one could *simulate* that one is sitting inside an IMAX theatre, I suppose.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I can't wait until they bring this to reality TV. I'll finally get to experience reality like it was meant to be experienced!
Stupider like a fox! - H.S.
Such full-motion video "games" do get created from time to time, and IIRC they're about as popular as CYOA books, which judging by library populations were never more than a childhood novelty. The problem is that you need to write and record many times more footage than for a singular plotline - even a clever composition where your choices only shift you between a couple main plotlines augmented by scene variations depending on past choices would probably take at least 2-5x more footage to create, meaning production time and expense increase at least 2-5x, but not many people are going to be willing to pay 2-5x more for the movie. Maybe you could get some people to at least pay blockbuster prices for a few enthusiast-grade CYOA movies just for the novelty, but I don't think that's quite what you're hoping for. You could potentially get a blockbuster-grade 20-minute short CYOA movie instead of a full-length movie, that's basically how the CYOA "novels" worked, but that takes some serious writing and directing cops to make anything more than a fluff-piece, and there's a certain amount of artistic tedium involved that will probably chase away the big names. How many *good* authors ever wrote a CYOA? There's a reason they were mostly childhood novelties.
All that said, yes, it would be pretty cool. But I'm not paying $100 for even a really good CYOAM.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I have an Oculus Rift, and I tried this 360 degree porn movie on it. It was pretty neat--the POV was from the guy's head, and you could look around at any of the three girls around you. It wasn't 3D (that would be _amazing_, to have 3D and 360 degrees), but it was still really cool.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
A looooong time ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360%C2%B0
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Here's a short Oculus movie that's running right now:
http://skammekrogen.dk/#
Short Oculus movie / exhibition piece that is running right now. Has the added bonus of every audience member having their own POV as one of the characters simultaneously - which seat you take around the table affects which movie you see. Head tracking is in there also, you can look around freely.
The problem I see with this is that with current movies, the movie maker is able to control what you're looking at. To tell the story they need to make sure that you see certain things at certain points. With a movie like this, you could miss a major plot point because you were looking at something else. Movie makers will have to change the way they structure stories for technology like this.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
I guess it has to start somewhere. Perhaps a tv show, that has voting after every episode, so next week we see the results, would be a good start. Eventually, a live tv show, with votes during the commercial breaks. I guess it'd have to be good improv performers. I guess I'm surprised that someone that either a rich Spielberg-type or some indie super director hasn't done it yet, even, as you said, with a short. Lynch or Cronenberg would we rad.
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Being in a big round room with screens all around you is not at all the same thing as stereoscopic VR.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
As I said, it has been done - just marketed as computer "games" since there's not really much interactivity support built into your DVD player. I could see them perhaps start to catch on with VR where the immersion in some exotic locale could make up for the shortcomings. And heck, we've already got the early stages of the "vote for next weeks story" in form of things like American Idol, but the plot is so thin it doesn't make all that much difference. And actually - I had a friend tell me about some show where they actually did have forum discussions and voting on plot points that would shape the next weeks episode . Something syfy/fantasy I believe... possibly a diner that sat on some sort of interdimensional rift? It never really caught my interst so I can't offer more.
I think the biggest reason we don't have more is that writing a book/play/movie/etc. is a creative act where you put your vision on paper, then try to sell it to other people. And like any creative act it's done first for the pleasure/egoism of the creator - giving the audience a say over anything of significance to the plot largely destroys that motivation.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.