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Facebook Finally Delivers On the VRML Dream With Immersive Star Wars Video

Posted by timothy on from the deep-inside-jabba-the-hutt dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook has launched its 360-degree video feature, with an eye to virtual reality and next year's release of the Oculus Rift. Among the showcase videos is a specially rendered 'fly-through' of a scene from new Star Wars movie 'The Force Awakens', allowing the viewer to pan laterally and horizontally as the movie progresses. This kind of immersive video was made possible with Apple's QuickTime VR in the 1990s, but was hampered by the same technological bottlenecks of the period as VRML.

5 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Bring on the cat videos ... by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, I know we've all been waiting with bated breath to have cat videos rendered in immersive VR.

    No, wait, the other one ... so, I can what, scroll around in the movie? I'm afraid I'm not getting the point of this. This sounds like one of those technologies which people want to create but nobody knows why they'd need it.

    Maybe I don't watch enough cat videos.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Bring on the cat videos ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Do you really want to restrict the choice of camera angles to a decision made by a highly experienced professional artist? Surely I should be given the freedom to accidentally be looking the wrong way as a major plot point unfolds, because then I get an individualised experience of "what the hell is happening here?!?"

      Captcha: record.
      Which raises an interesting question -- if I'm out when the 360-degree film is broadcast, am I going to have to set the viewing angles for the DVR to avoid unnecessary hard-drive usage...?

  2. Not hampered by technology by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's not a technological problem. The real issues with this kind of technology is that it removes direction from the movie. Directors use different angles, aspect ratios, focal lenghts, etc to direct and control the viewer's attention. How do that do that if the viewer is in control of the camera.

    They may partially try to do that and then you end up with the stupid situation like that scene in Avatar where the main character wakes from cryo. It was a classic change of focus from a water droplet to the main character, but in 3D it was distracting as heck as I was trying to focus on the water droplet but couldn't. This would not be helped if I could move the camera to not even look at the character in the first place.

  3. Re:the real VRML dream: see rule 34 by thegarbz · · Score: 2

    No it means we can turn our head when the director decides the focus is on the man's ugly face 5 seconds before the money shot.

    err I mean I don't know anything about it. Porn is shot in houses? Really? Wouldn't know.

  4. Not really VR by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 2

    Sure, you can look around all you want but you can't move anywhere you want.