Yesterday the 2017 Sundance Film Festival began, showcasing a wide range of cinematic experiences, from short films and animations all the way to 360-degree and virtual reality (VR) content. In a festival debut, Positron, a Los Angeles-based VR studio has unveiled its full-motion VR chair platform Voyager as part of New Frontier.
Voyager is a fully integrated, VR theatre incorporating motorized rotation, pitch, and haptics. Its technology allows VR directors to encode a motion and haptic track to complement the existing visuals and audio, delivering an enhanced immersive experience. Voyager will screen select VR works from the New Frontier program, including If Not Love and Orbital Vanitas during the event.
“Positron is thrilled to offer cinema lovers at the Sundance Film Festival the opportunity to experience a completely new level of immersion in VR storytelling with Voyager,” said Jeffrey Travis, creator of the chair and CEO of Positron. “New Frontier is the ideal forum to share groundbreaking technology that provides filmgoers with a completely relaxed VR motion experience while empowering filmmakers to direct the viewer’s attention to points of interest in the story.”
“We’re truly excited to be presenting our VR experience, Orbital Vanitas, to Sundance Film Festival audiences through Voyager and the revolutionary motion it provides for cinematic VR,” said Shaun Gladwell, Lead Artist. Leo Faber, screenwriter and executive producer on the film adds: “To have the technological tools that enable us to further deepen the narrative through Voyager’s gentle motion and haptics is now a very happy reality for VR storytellers.”
Few details have been released on Voyager so far in regards to specifications, price, or release date. Jennifer Rundell, COO & Co-Founder, Positron has commented: “We discovered after gathering data from over 1,500 people, that Voyager solves the critically important problem of discomfort and motion sickness. Voyager is an exceptional seated VR solution that offers gentle motion that’s organically connected to the storytelling, and users who previously experienced motion sickness with VR report they no longer suffer from it in our chair. Voyager takes into account how our bodies need to be involved while allowing people to experience VR with more of their senses, to relax and go magical places, leaving the current physical space behind.”
As VRFocus learns more about Voyager and whether it’ll be a consumer product, we’ll let you know.