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My Neighbor Totoro In Virtual Reality
An anonymous reader writes "Nick Pitton, the developer behind the Spirited Away Boiler Room VR experience, has released his second project: the bus stop scene from Studio Ghibli's famous movie My Neighbor Totoro, once again in virtual reality for the Oculus Rift. Pittom 'hand-painted' the textures in Photoshop to recreated the painted-background feel of the movie. For the characters (Totoro and the Catbus) he used a cel-shaded approached to approximate the animated look from the movie. For his next project, he plans to recreate the ship and characters from the acclaimed anime Cowboy Bebop."
I couldn't help but notice:
- Input delay for head tracking (most probably due to Unity)
- Head tracking doesnt seem to match where he wants to look
- He's having to "flick" his head many times to "fix" the headtracking.
Back to basics and coding is whats needed here.
It does suck that FB bought OR. In principle I have nothing against buying a VR headset from them, same as buying a mouse from "evil" Microsoft, as long as it's just hardware. Problem is: FB, unlike MS, is a company founded on a business model of gathering and whoring out our personal data, and serving us ads. Not a big fan of that. FB may be trying to diversify their business a bit with projects like the OR, which is good, but they may also see it as something to augment their existing business model. In general I'm not happy to see these exiting new startups being snapped up by the new molochs: FB buying OR, Google buying Nest, etc.
There are a number of other groups working on VR headsets, but as far as I can tell they range from DIY efforts to prototypes that are still a long way from appearing on shelves in shops. Even Valve seems to be struggling, with their VR team bleeding talent to OR's team. With that said, I do expect some consumer and computer electronics manufacturers to jump on the bandwagon once OR proves that there is a viable market for VR headsets.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
OR IP is more than likely being stripped apart by patent lawyers to ensure that none of the other up and coming VR competitors make it off of the starting block, Its a damn shame but that sort of thing could ultimately be the end of VR or at least set it back by years (we have already waited far too long). I really hope Facebook don't get in the way of what could be a long sought after technology in favour of a fast lame advertising return on a half baked product but I wont hold my breath.
So it seems the Rift movies are in phase one still, where they experiment with replicating 2D movies in a 3D environment, and the result is about as boring as you'd expect. A bit like movie -> game (or vice-versa) conversions, you've really got to transform the work to fit the medium copying the scene verbatim with directionless self-insertion into the scene is pretty dull.
Based on my few minutes of thinking about it, I'm inclined to believe that the only way Rift "movies" will work is either as games or as replications of a play, where the user is stationary but can look around a scene in front of them from their vantage point. If you can't control at least part of the user's vision you're going to have a difficult time making a good movie – they could be looking in completely the wrong direction when something interesting happens, even with audio cues indicating where to look. A play allows the audience member to look around, but only in one major direction, which seems like it would fit the Rift pretty well. I guess this could include virtual concerts too; might even be able to do them in real-time with a good camera setup.
Your anonymous tirade has shown us all the way. I think you are exactly the type of rational, not-at-all-insane person we want to help us all as a society to make informed decisions about how best to reduce gun violence and the slaughter of children. If this obviously well adjusted person says gun control doesn't work, let's all listen to him and everyone else who is fighting to keep those Glocks, AR-15 assault rifles and other implements of death on our streets!
After wrestling with some angst I'm inclined to agree. Hopefully Facebook sees a way to create VR social spaces or something, and just want to make sure the hardware is ready to hit the ground running - network effects benefit dramatically from the capability for mass adoption if something "goes viral", and FB is all about network effects. It seems like a social focus might add some other interesting features as well - for example if they stick with the head-tracking camera I could easily see adding limited facial expression tracking so that your avatar could at least smile/frown/etc naturally, which could add a nice touch in more serious games as well.
So long as Facebook doesn't "contaminate" the OR itself (system-snooping drivers/APIs? major licensing fees for developers?) I'm still inclined to buy one, it seems like they are the most promising of the bunch both in timing and quality, though a lot will also depend on whether they maintain the collaboration with Valve - they being the ones with the serious game developer community and game-development APIs incorporating easy VR.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Please, oh Anonymous Coward. Please dazzle us with your great creations in VR. We're all very interested to see what your great creative mind can achieve.
These scenes are pretty awesome, especially for anime fans. My girlfriend was a little apprehensive about trying out the rift, til I showed her the Boiler Room scene. I intend to let her see this one too, but I may wait for my dk2 to come in. The drift from the dk1 caused a fair bit of motion sickness for her after only a few minutes, and I don’t want to turn her off from VR completely. I know she’s a huge fan of Cowboy Bebop, so I suspect she’ll enjoy seeing that too.
Or those idiots who respond to trolls on public message boards. How pathetic is that?
Or you could, you know, just download the whole thing and run it yourself. It will display on screen, just like in the linked video, with no head-slab required.
Fuck off. Stop comment spamming. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
other people's* work
peoples = more than one group of people
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
A VR Faye Valentine, looks like there's an OR purchase in my future!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
"I don't think he's put the files out for you to play it on your OR."
You're joking right? The download links are right there in the summary.