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DreamWorks Reveals Glimpse of "Super Cinema" Format For VR Films
An anonymous reader writes Warren Mayoss, Head of Technology Product Development at DreamWorks Animation, spoke at the 2014 Samsung Developer Conference last week about the company's forays into the young medium of virtual reality. In addition to real-time experiences, DreamWorks is exploring ways to enabled their bread and butter in VR: high-fidelity pre-rendered CGI. One method the company is exploring is a "Super Cinema" format: pre-rendered 360 degree 3D frames to be projected around the user in virtual reality. On stage, Mayoss showed a video glimpse of the format using assets from the company's "How to Train Your Dragon" franchise.
Technically this should be impossible to do correctly.
Ignoring the higher rendering costs of 360 vision, this also means that they will have to setup a scene not only where the camera is facing, but everywhere else within vision of the rotation of the camera. This would seem to dramatically increase the work involved (including something as simple as having to animate an entire crowd even when the focus is on a single character.
... or do we have to spend the rest of time watching films with CGI that looks completely realistic when static, but as soon as something moves, the (strangely) incorrect gravity and inertia models give the game away?
It's almost as if they are training the public to think that all CGI has to look blatantly fake... so they can use the correct gravity and inertia models for their false flag productions, like 9/11... (September Clues)
Instead of rendering a relatively small 1920×1080 frame, as you’d find on a Blu-ray for instance, a 360 degree frame would have to be many times that resolution in order to preserve quality after stretching all the way around the viewer.
Maybe the movie could be pre-rendered into a 3D model, with information about polygons, textures, and lighting, and then perform the 3D->2D conversion in the viewer's headset for the section that the viewer is looking at.
After over a decade of superhero and action films that follow all the same formula of Save the Cat!
I think Avatar did so well because it was the first film that felt different in a long time. Not talking about the derivative writing (forget Dances with Wolves, that's just classic Myth of the Noble Savage from 19th Century Romantists), but an actual alien world that felt somewhat alien and not in a superficial trees-grow-sideways and Aliens age backwards way. And how many years was that now?
Japan is going to get 4k and 8k. So will we, and while not supported by the shitty infrastruture here, I have no doubt some next gen bluray will bolster it.
Cinemas offer nothing special anymore in terms of viewing experience, if you have a family ticket costs are such that it's cheaper to get a good multimedia system and redbox/netflix it and the new cinemas popping up around me always serve food or something beyond popcorn. In other words, they are a restaurant or microbrewery first and a theater second, some type of communal experience the classic theater lacks.
Looking at amazon, can get a Sony 60-Inch 1080p 120Hz under a grand. And a 80-inch Aquos HD 1080p 120Hz for under $2,300. No longer heavy pieces of shit either like in the tube or even old LCD days. Shit are prices dropping. What will that be in 5, 10, 15 years?
And really, who thought a building that had a dozen or 2 huge rooms, plus all the hallways that needed connecting, heating, and airconditioning, not too mention the expensive bulbs to replace in the projectors.... who thought they would die? It's not like they have to pay 90%+ to the studio making the film in the first weeks the film is out... oh wait. And in an era when blockbusters no longer run for years (Gone with the Wind, 4+ years, to Star Wars, over a year) but for weeks, 2 months if they're really huge but even that has shrunk in the meantime.
IOW, I fully expect this industry to implode within 15 years, being generous. It's like the horse whip industry, yet it keeps going and I can't figure out why.
Oh that's right, studios propping up that which they siphoned every nickel from because that's one more profitable stop in the entertainment chain for their slop. Except profit and revenues now are down across the board, people don't need to see the exact same shitty movies twice, and nevermind pay for it.
so they can use the correct gravity and inertia models for their false flag productions, like 9/11... (September Clues)
The 9/11 gravity and inertia models were so well done, it even fooled the people on the streets who saw it live.
When they created stereoscopic 2D technology, they marketed it as "3D", even though it was nothing of the sort.
So now, when they're creating actual 3D technology, they have a marketing problem, they can't call it 3D movies even though that's what it is, because then people will associate it with the earlier, inferior technology. So now they want to call it VR??
It's not VR. It's a movie format with a fixed viewpoint. Sure you can look in all directions from that viewpoint, but you can't move around in this "world", because there's no actual virtual world to interact with. It's just a movie, not VR, don't call it VR.
It isn't gravity and interia that tells the CGI from reality. it is the background. Not sure if it is depth, or shadows, or some combination of them. I can always tell when a green screen and CGI is being used to draw the backgrounds. Now if it is the complete background it is always obvious and jarring. If they use lots of props and use the green screen to draw the sky, or distant backgrounds that depends on what is in those backgrounds.
That being said my eyes don't work for 3D tech it gives me a headache. so may be they are trying to use fake 3D tech to give illusion that simply doesn't translate for my mind.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Even if the technology is available, it would conflict with the typical objectives of film, which is generally to convey single narrative to an audience, a one to many relationship if you will. Implementing VR technology in film would create a many to many relationship, with the potential for no two viewers seeing the same film. I wonder how the creators of films will feel about the loss of creative control, in terms of what the viewers see and what they don't see.