Deepening the immersion of virtual reality is something many creators or working on, from finding a natural form of locomotion to delivering realistic physical feedback from these virtual worlds. The latter of the two has been tackled in various forms but a common factor between a majority of the options is a high price tag. The VRgluv, currently undergoing a Kickstarter campaign, is an attempt to bring affordable feedback to HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Despite the team behind VRgluv touting this as an affordable haptic device, it doesn’t look like the glove will be without any significant features. It is said to offer complete tracking for every individual finger and will have realistic force feedback for each as well. On top of all that, they aim to make it lightweight, comfortable, and rechargeable all while somehow being wireless as well.
For the “We Got Funded” pricing tier the project’s creators promise a pair of VRgluvs for $369 (limited to 400 pairs). The “Kickstarter” special promises a pair at $399, described as being a “20% reduction off the retail price”. If this glove operates as they say with minimal lag, this price sounds like quite a bargain. It may take a little bit more time to bring the price to a fully consumer friendly zone, but it isn’t far off from a price that allow it to be paired with the Rift and Vive in a bundle and not scare off the early adopters.
The VRgluv team says they already getting developer kits out to creators. Experiences such as Drunken Bar Fight and Abode are listed as compatible content and, considering they’ve surpassed their $100,000 goal with most of the month to go, that list should grow quickly. Stay tuned to UploadVR for more updates in the future.
Welcome to a new week of releases for th HTC Vive! We’ve got two vastly different highlights, but be sure to scour the full collection to see if there’s something that catches your eye. TITAN SLAYER brings some extra flavor to the virtual brawler by asking you to be stylish and flashy while taking down massive monsters. Holos is a visually appealing and free web-centric VR OS with a large collection of customization tools. Better yet, it’s all manipulated with a manageable card system.
We also have a top list of the absolute best HTC Vive games — which is updated every few months with the latest and greatest options.
New HTC Vive Releases on Steam
Glider Island, from Joey Sipos
Price: $7.99
Across 3 vibrant landscapes, Glider Island allows you to fly as you’ve always to. Get the angles right and use your rocket boosters to stay in the sky, avoid danger, and collect all of the hoops around the islands.
Recommendation: Grab this one during a sale maybe. Pass for now.
Deathlike: Awakening, from Cybreath
Price: $9.99
In Deathlike: Awakening you awaken in an abandoned place filled with great evil. Maneuver carefully to survive this horrific experience.
Recommendation: This is a fright fest you can skip.
Viking Rage, from N-Gon Entertainment
Price: $16.19 (Currrently Discounted)
Tap into your rage and prepare for battle! In Viking Rage, you’ll be tossing bombs, swinging your ax, and shooting arrows as you defend the fortress of the Vikings.
Recommendation: This is defense shooter and brawler with a lot of style. Price is steep though, probably a pass.
Gem Hunter, from FoxLeap
Price: $9.99
Gem Hunter is a story-driven action platformer where you pilot your hovercraft to collect the Fox King’s lost diamonds. Mine gems, battle creatures, uncover secrets, defeat the three witches, and more.
Recommendation: Be careful if you’re easily susceptible to VR sickness.
Journey to Alien Worlds, from Ideographer
Price: $4.24 (Currrently Discounted)
Travel into the great unknown and walk the surface of planets, satellites, and comets in Journey to Alien Worlds. You can experience Venus, Venera 7, the Apollo Lunar Module, and more.
Recommendation: There are a handful of similar experiences that have vastly higher production quality. Pass on this one right now.
COMET STRIKE, from PRIME WORKS Co., Ltd.
Price: $9.99
In five new unexplored sections of space, COMET STRIKE challenges you to rapidly complete a collection of puzzles. Special blocks, areas, and skills will be yours for the taking as you progress.
Recommendation: It’s a decently priced arcade experience. Give it a go unless you’ve already dropped pennies on similar content.
TITAN SLAYER, from COLOPL, Inc.
Price: $9.9 (Currrently Discounted)
TITAN SLAYER is exactly what the name implies: A brawler that pits you against monstrous giants. With swords, bows, and guns in your arsenal, your goal is not only to take down these beasts but do it with the most amount of style you can muster.
Recommendation: With this, you get exciting combat that isn’t only stylish but requires a degree of strategy. Grab this one for sure.
Holos, from Holos, Inc.
Price: Free
Holos is your private, customizable computing space. Centered around cards, the application provides an experience that is easy to get into but engaging enough for those seeking more advanced interaction.
Recommendation: This is an absolutely gorgeous and functional free virtual space with a lot of options. Get this for sure.
30th Century Post Office, from Toxodon Games
Price: $9.99
This game takes you to a 30th-century future where robots have taken over Earth. The number of humans is falling but labor forces have to increase to save costs. The result? Destroy the robotic status quo.
Recommendation: Hold off and let it evolve in Early Access a bit more.
Blackjack Bailey VR, from Hologram Software LTD., iCandy Games Inc.
Price: $5.99 (Currrently Discounted)
Blackjack Bailey VR provides you with a casual blackjack experience hosted by your cool dealer Bailey. The game has no microtransactions and you can play with no limits with Las Vegas house rules.
Recommendation: Pass on this one.
Seeking Evil: The Wendigo, from Copybugpaste
Price: $10.19 (Currrently Discounted)
Within the cursed forests of North America, Seeking Evil puts you on the path of a bloodthirsty predator. Your goal is to burn nine totems quickly before you’re captured and eaten alive.
Recommendation: Clear Slenderman influence. Keep an eye on this one throughout Early Access, it’s a bit bare bones right now.
Don’t Get Hit In The Face, from DracoSoftware, LLC
Price: $3.99
Don’t Get Hit In The Face is a movement-based game where you do whatever movement necessary to avoid getting hit. The game includes 4 game modes with increasing difficulty and a 13 track soundtrack.
Recommendation: The game intends to be added to a collection for VR workouts, but there are certainly more interesting titles with similar ideas. Pass on this.
Batman: Arkham VR, from Rocksteady Studios
Price: $19.99
Batman: Arkham VR is a visually impressive look at Gotham City through the eyes of the iconic Batman himself. You’ll start as Bruce Wayne and descend down into the bat cave to switch to his vigilante persona.
Recommendation: This experience is ultimately a brief glimpse for something that could have been greater. Not worth the purchase right now unless you just absolutely crave the fan service.
Interkosmos, from Ovid Works
Price: $4.99
Test your skills as an astronaut in Interkosmos, a comedic mini-adventure of astronomical proportions. In this game, you’ll guide your 1970s-inspired re-entry capsule to a safe landing. The procedures serve as a collection of arcade-style mini games.
Recommendation: Really cool theme for arcade-style VR gameplay. Grab it. Here’s our preview.
I Expect You To Die, from Schell Games
Price: $24.99
I Expect You To Die employs you as a secret agent armed with telekinetic abilities. You’ll use your abilities to maneuver through this puzzle experience and stop the Zoraxis, global weapons and pharmaceutical corporation.
The Uncertain is a bit of an experiment with voiced characters and the ability to manipulate all of the items you come across. It’s an interactive gallery that will evolve with every episode.
Recommendation: Free tech demo that you should check out. Could lead to some really neat content.
Symphony of the Machine, from Stirfire Studios
Price: $15.99 (Currently Discounted)
In Symphony of the Machine, an ancient tower stands in a barren land and you must ascend and unravel the mysteries of its powers. You’re assisted by the tower’s guardian as you use the tower’s tools to bring life back to the land around you.
Recommendation: Very cool and visually impressive experience. Grab it.
Challenge Cube VR, from Optical Network
Price: $3.99
With an audience spectating, Challenge Cube has you completing a series of bizarre challenges as you move up in the rankings. Throughout the tasks, you’ll be tested on reaction speed, memory, and more.
Recommendation: Essentially this is a collection of spatial mini-game challenges. There are better options around. Pass on this.
Karnage Chronicles, from Nordic Trolls
Price: $24.99
Karnage Chronicles is an episodic action RPG with a high fantasy theme. You’ll engage in action-intense combat across unique character classes as you unravel the mystery of your past.
Recommendation: There’s a lot going into this Early Access title. Keep an eye on it and pull the trigger once you see the class you want to play and co-op is added.
Virtual Islands, from Tim McCulloch
Price: $3.99
Virtual Islands gives you your own private tropical island on which to play some realistic mini-golf. The game includes 18 holes and global/local leaderboards. There’s also a bonus driving range and driveable golf cart.
Recommendation: For the price, it is a fun little virtual getaway.
Puttyface, from the3dCrew
Price: Free
If you’re a fan of shaping unique ideas with clay, Puttyface is for you. You can smash, morph, push, and pull the putty to make whatever you can come up with.
Recommendation: It’s a free, casual experience. Check it out at least.
VR Dungeon Knight, from Blackjard Softworks
Price: $14.99
VR Dungeon Knight drops you into a cursed world that only you can save. You’ll explore dungeons that are different each time you enter, loot, and destroy the evil sources with a collection of weapons to weaken the curse.
Recommendation: Worth it already if you have a friend to play with, otherwise wait and see how it improves.
Trapped With the Dolls VR, from Designated Play Space
Price: Free
Trapped With The Dolls is a room-scale psychological thriller where you solve puzzles in order to escape the dolls’ pursuit. This is an escape the room experience that lasts roughly 10-15 minutes.
Recommendation: Free escape room? Give it a go.
New HTC Vive Releases on Viveport
Xinajiapo, from Blue King Technology
Price: Free
Xinajiapo is a collection of 9 visually appealing scenes across a virtual household.
Recommendation: Pretty, but not really worth a download.
As noted in the review for Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality, the game’s developer Owlchemy Labs turned Job Simulator into the unofficial poster child of VR gaming. We gave Job Simulator an 8 out of 10 and, with Rick and Morty receiving an 8.5, Owlchemy finds themselves in a fortunate position once again with a well- developed and received game being attached with an extremely popular (and hilarious) Adult Swim franchise.
With such a pedigree being established at this early stage of virtual reality, one might think every single step is meticulously planned. The opposite is true. Not to say Owlchemy hasn’t done the work to earn this opportunity, but there’s a degree of chaos that played not only into the creation of Rick and Morty VR’s many features, but the creation of the game itself as well.
It All Started With A Tweet
On a calm Sunday in Austin, Texas, the UploadVR team met with a few people from the Owlchemy Labs team: Owlmancer and Studio Director Cy Wise, CEO and Janitor Alex Schwartz, Producer/Developer and alleged certified adult, Andrew Eiche, and CTO (Chief Technical Owl) Devin Reimer. The crew spoke excitedly about the development of the game, from scrapped ideas that eventually returned to making sure the humor landed. The Rick and Morty cartoon’s humor combined with the gameplay of Job Simulator is a perfect fit, but the marriage came together through a Twitter connection.
“Justin Roiland [the co-creator of and title character voice actor for Rick and Morty] had access to early VR hardware back in the early days and was tweeting wildly about Job Simulator being his favorite thing he’d ever played and was going nuts on Twitter,” Schwartz recalls. “[We] love the cartoon, Rick and Morty. It was all this perfect confluence so [I] had to tweet back at him.”
I can’t not wait for more levels!! Haha. Job sim is so much fun!
A few weeks later, Schwartz and a couple others on the team ended up at Roiland’s place in Hollywood eating Indian food and playing Job Simulator, which organically led to “What if Rick and Morty were in Job Simulator?” or “What if Job Simulator were in the Rick and Morty universe?” Only a week and a half later they were at Adult Swim’s headquarters with the one-line pitch. Within a couple weeks they were signing contracts and building the game.
We reached out to Roiland over the phone after our meeting with Owlchemy and he was able to fill in the gaps on how this all went down.
“To get the ball rolling, first I reached out to Jeff Olsen at Adult Swim Games and ran it by him,” Roiland says. “The plan for the pitch was to fly to Atlanta, get Mike Lazzo from Adult Swim in a Vive. We did and he absolutely flipped out. I also brought Dan Harmon, the co-creator of Rick and Morty, to that pitch, we wanted full firepower. We just pitched it and he just had a blast with the concept. When he came out, we gave him a rough idea for the game. Alex came prepared with the concept (you’re gonna be a Morty clone) I pushed back a bit at first, asking what if maybe you were a Meseeks for example instead? But we didn’t want to have to try and explain what it’s like inside of a Meseeks box, it just made it too complicated. His pitch was the better idea. You could die a bunch and come back, which was funny.”
We could have ended up with a Mr. Meeseeks focused VR game. Somehow we feel it’d be pretty brief.
While the Mr. Meeseeks idea was scrapped they did end up creating the Youseeks assistant that mirrors your movement, one of the coolest parts of the final game. It’s pretty nice seeing such an element of the cartoon brought to life, but that transition from cartoon to 3D in a virtual space took some work.
“We got away with floating robots in Job Simulator and now we had to have fully rigged, fully animated and lipsynced bipedal characters who are moving naturally but are a cartoon,” Schwartz explains. “You don’t want that uncanny valley and so we spent so many months on a character pipeline on figuring out how they can deliver lines, how they can get in your space, how you can kind of go back and forth with a character having it seem realistic without getting into kind of weird territory.”
That “weird territory” is definitely something they had to keep in mind when working on the non-playable character’s eyes. In VR users are ducking and moving around pretty erratically so you have to have the NPCs respond to it naturally.
Terrifying *brrp* Creative Freedom
Considering they’re working with a well-known license from a huge company in Adult Swim, you’d think they’d have to adhere to strict guidelines. They didn’t.
“It was actually surprising, for a big IP like this, how much creative control they gave us,” Schwartz says.”It was really an honor to be working on a thing that we loved.”
The team essentially had open communication with Adult Swim. They’d work on dialogue and character design and, if it was funny and worked, it was approved. It served as a better workflow as opposed to taking tiny steps, awaiting approval, and constantly going back and forth in that way. Being handed such creative control had to be a relaxing process right?
“That was terrifying,” Andrew Eiche immediately says, sparking laughter and agreement from the rest of the team. That freedom wasn’t taken lightly either and Eiche later adds that “almost every single item in the game has something it accomplishes, has some joke, or was in the show and we had to include it.”
“We’re about 50/50 on being able to predict whether something will even be good, like sometimes we’re like this is going to be terrible but we’ll try and it turns out great,” Eiche remarks. One particular creation that’s a big hit with Roiland is the Roy: A Life Well Lived knockoff called Troy.
“They knew they wanted to do Troy from the very start and it’s all voiced by one guy,” says Roiland. “It’s a brilliant branching tree. I’ve played it so many times and I keep finding new stuff. They crammed in so much stuff it’s crazy.”
Troy is an example of an idea that was a hit from inception but there definitely were ideas shot into the wastebasket. One particular idea was cut and brought back later on as the team realized it completely solved their pacing problems for the game: The watch.
“That’s our ticket system,” Schwartz says referring to the feature in Job Simulator that signaled your move to the next task. In Rick and Morty, you look at the watch on your hand to answer a call from Rick or call him to let him know you’re ready to move on.
“The other thing that happens is we’ll hear someone try to do something in play testing and they’ll be disappointed,” says Eiche. “Then we hit this kind of wall where like OK, how do we solve this problem? And it either ends up being we have to account for it or we have to make a joke.”
“Yeah, that’s the Job Simulator conundrum. That’s how we came up with half of the weirdness,” Schwartz adds.
What is the stupidest thing in the game?
The interview was shoved off the rails when this question was asked. When things settled down, though, the general consensus was poop. The game includes a combinator tool that lets you combine various items in the game to make new creations. You also retrieve a piece of poop in the game. So naturally these two elements play together and this poop can be modified into poop hybrids.
Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality is available for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. You can purchase it on Steam or Oculus Home and declare the “stupidest thing” for yourself. Keep in mind, there are things that Justin Roiland, the co-creator of Rick and Morty, hasn’t found.
“They’ll put stuff into the game and not tell anybody, not even me, so there is stuff in there that no one has found yet,” Roiland said. “It keeps the game alive for a longer period of time when people are trying to find everything.”
The Next@Acer event serves as an opportunity for Acer to show off new upcoming hardware and software in development with partners. Starbreeze studios’ influence continues to be peppered throughout the virtual reality industry and they took the stage during Acer’s event to show off some new content for their StarVR headset, a piece of hardware finding homes in VR arcade installations. Chairman of StarVR Bo Anderson took the stage and boasted about a few of the upgrades to StarVR over the last 6 months since its introduction including improved resolution. He then revealed a collection of new content coming to the StarVR platform in the near future.
“Through software and hardware we like to enable people,” Anderson said during the conference. “And we really would like to enable the movie industry as well.” The segment following this statement showed off a new experience that welcomes users directly into movies. On the creative end, this particular experience isn’t working on a game engine but in a VFX setup that allows filmmakers to work their movie’s assets right into a cinematic VR event. Anderson then welcomes Brooks Brown to the stage. Brown is the Global Director of VR for Starbreeze Studios, who unveiled a handful of new StarVR experiences in the works — but didn’t show any real gameplay unfortunately.
In late March 2016, we reported on Starbreeze investing $750,000 in Freeform Labs and Brown spoke briefly on that before diving into some new upcoming StarVR games. Each of the different games is being created as a partnership with different developers. With Desert Owl Games, they’re creating a game where you fight 60-story tall aliens. With Lucky Hammers, you take on the role of a gigantic cybernetic mutant ape and take down drones as you hang from a skyscraper. They’re collaborating with iNK Stories, the developers of choice-driven narrative focused game Revolution 1979, for an experience called Hero that taps into VR’s capability of being an “empathy engine”. Lastly, they’re working with Red Games for a 4-player cooperative experience called The Raft. In it, the players must work together to survive a trip down a haunted river.
Anderson pointed out that they’ve shipped development kits for StarVR to select location-based partners such as IMAX, which has been home to StarVR at least as far back as February this year in their new dedicated VR space in Los Angeles, California (Anderson said there are “more to come” during the Acer event as well). These new creations sound like a diverse collection of content to bolster the VR arcade experience.
There’s steady growth across the VR industry, but the market is under a microscope nevertheless. Mass consumer adoption is the goal and many eyes are looking out for what will ultimately inspire the transition in the average consumer’s household. Considering the average consumer’s desire for entertainment, it makes sense that some expect gaming to be the spark and it looks like the PlayStation VR (PSVR) is leading that charge in Japan as reported on eMarketer.
2016 marked the birth of the modern virtual reality era with the launch of HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PSVR. Sony’s headset was a bit late to the party but stepped into the fray with an established device already in homes (the PS4) that could power the headset which made for easier adoption. eMarketer’s reporter compiled statistics from the International Data Corporation (IDC), finding that PSVR accounted for more than 90% of VR headset shipments in Japan by the end of Q4 2016. Recently back in late February, Sony also confirmed it was nearing 1M headsets sold already.
No matter how it all shakes out, it looks like PSVR will be the face of the immersive movement in Japan. This doesn’t set anything in stone when it comes to massive adoption for average consumer households around the world, but can other VR hardware creators learn from it? Is there something to this seemingly insurmountable lead Sony has established beyond Sony being a Japanese company? Time will tell.
With body language, humans are able to express a range of feelings with only the most the subtle shifts in demeanor. Our facial expressions alone can show off a huge range of responses. Interaction with VR is something various companies continue to try to nail down, attempting to enable users to manipulate these worlds while breaking immersion as little as possible. Samsung’s experimental Facesense is a new attempt at changing the game, harnessing the power of our facial expression for hands-free VR interaction.
April 14th – 15th at the VRLA Expo, Samsung showed a new creation from their C-Lab division. C-Lab cultivates ideas that are more experimental and this particular one provides a new way to navigate within VR. Detailed in an announcement, Facesense tracks electric signals that are created any time we speak, change our expression, or shift our gaze. Those signals are then used for navigation input along with a few spoken commands.
We tried the technology at VRLA briefly and it was a very early concept. It likely won’t be something that dominates as a primary means of interaction within VR, but it could be a complement to VR controllers. We’ll have to see if Facesense can find a degree of consistency with its input across all users. It could also serve as an option for those that cannot use VR controllers, opening up accessibility to virtual technology in a big way.
In the grand scheme of things, we’re still in the early stages of virtual reality adoption. While the price of admission may still be a bit on the higher end for some, the software ecosystem is inspiring people to invest and get hardware that can support these immersive experiences. Yesterday we reported on an Oculus bundle that nets you a VR-ready PC, Rift, Touch controllers, and four games for $1300. Today, NVIDIA has revealed a bundle of their own.
Starting today and for a limited time, anyone who grabs the VR-ready GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, GTX 1080, GTX 1070, or GTX 1060 graphics cards, or a PC/laptop equipped with one of those cards, along with an Oculus Rift & Touch Set, will receive 3 VR games entirely for free: The Unspoken, SUPERHOT VR, and Wilson’s Heart.
The Unspoken is basically a magic fight club with addictive gameplay, the recently released Wilson’s Heart provides a platform best narrative experience, and SUPERHOT VR is an adrenaline rush that’s likely the most well known of the three across the gaming community. The three games are certainly nothing to shake a stick at; they all arguably represent the best the Oculus Rift ecosystem has to offer and, coincidentally, all received 9 out of 10 from the UploadVR editorial staff.
If you’re in the market for a VR-headset but don’t quite think your PC can carry the load, now’s a good time to grab a bundle that brings you into the fold and gives you some of the best content you can experience to boot.
Starting off the month of May in a big way, the Vision VR/AR Summit will have a schedule filled to the brim with great content and networking opportunities for all creatives and enthusiasts with their eyes on virtual and augmented technology.
Artists, engineers, programmers, designers, musicians, directors, producers, hardware manufacturers and researchers alike will all find something of interest. The confirmed keynote speakers include Baobab studio’s Maureen Fan, Facebook’s Head of Social VR Rachel Franklin, Jay Wright of Vuforia, and Unity’s CEO John Riccitiello, and we’ve put together a list highlighting some of the notable events taking place May 1-2.
May 1st
10:00 AM – 11:30 AM | Vision Summit 2017 Opening Keynote
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM | Social Impact and VR
3:30 PM – 4:15 PM | Big AR Talk: Three Innovators Discuss Unlocking AR’s Potential
4:30 PM – 5:00 PM | How to Get the Most Out of Mobile VR in Unity
May 2nd
10:45 AM – 11:15 AM | Docs and Devs: Combining Expertise to Improve Life-Saving Medical Training With VR
2:30 PM – 3:15 PM | Get Ready: The Money Is Coming – Everything You Need to Prepare and Get Excited for Advertising in VR
4:15 PM – 4:45 PM | Unity for Architects, Engineers, and Construction (AEC)
After the keynote on May 1, the winners of the Vision VR/AR Awards will be announced. If you wish to attend the summit, attendee registration is still available with passes ranging from $190 (educator/student) to $500 (standard). Unity also sent us some free passes we’ll be giving away on Twitter — just tweet out your interest in attending with the hashtag #vision17 and tag @UploadVR for a chance to win one of them.
Yesterday Digital Domain unveiled a 360-degree camera and production toolset that will better equip creators for VR broadcasting and publishing. Today they’re putting the content itself at the forefront, announcing a new application that will collect both Digital Domain’s original creations and their live-broadcasted events. Their growing collection of in-house produced content and experiences from partners warrants the new application, available today.
“In 2016 we saw significant advances in devices for virtual reality experiences,” said Amit Chopra, the Executive Director and CEO of North America at Digital Domain, in the press release for the announcement. “From mobile phones to room-scale VR systems, there are more ways than ever to explore virtual reality. However, there’s now a tremendous demand for new and engaging VR content for the audiences using those devices. At Digital Domain, we’re leveraging our visual effects artistry and technology to produce VR storytelling experiences that inspire audiences. Our new app is our platform for sharing our live streamed and curated VR experiences with the world.”
This new application bridges the gap between Digital Domain and their audience, simplifying the experience and bringing it to all the major VR devices. Many similar apps spring up from different production and creative groups, so how does this one differ?
“The Digital Domain app is about premium content, including both live streaming events and episodic content. It is unique in the market from that perspective,” says Vice President of VR Platform and Apps for Digital Domain Dhruv Gupta, whom we reached out to via email. “You will also see innovations in the type of content we offer, beyond just passive video. It is serialized content that will drive consumers to come back to their VR devices again and again. If VR is to displace the television, it will be serialized content that makes it happen, and we will continue to release new episodic series throughout 2017.”
The need for serialized content is a popular sentiment in VR right now. It also helps that the premium content gets tons of views and Gupta shared with us that they’ve achieved that milestone with Gorilla Doctors and World Surf League content among others.
You can check it all out for yourself right now as the app was released for free today and already includes a solid collection of content including the trailer for their original series Monkey King, which is slated to release this quarter. Download it for iOS, Android, and Gear VR.
The Star Wars films are always a visual feast with top-tier visual effects constantly on display. The creative team behind Rogue One found a way to utilize VR while putting the movie together, dropping the director into space so he can find the best shots for the film. They even went the extra mile with VR promotion, a tool many different films have taken advantage of, by crafting a teaser called Recon that served as a prequel to the film’s main events. Rogue One was a branch off from the main Star Wars storyline, tying some loose ends revolving around the Death Star but, now, Nokia and Lucasfilm plan to deliver some behind-the-scenes VR content for the coming film The Last Jedi.
Nokia and Lucasfilm are in a multi-year deal to create VR content for Star Wars: The Last Jedi and more Disney properties. They’re supplying Disney marketers and filmmakers with the OZO 360-degree camera and accompanying software.
“We want nothing more than to share the Star Wars universe with fans around the world and fans tell us they love to have the opportunity to learn more about the process of filmmaking,” says Senior Vice President, Franchise Creative & Strategy at Lucasfilm Brian Miller. “Utilizing the Nokia OZO to capture our behind the scenes material allows viewers to be transported to fantastical locations and virtually visit the incredible sets where their favorite Star Wars scenes were captured.”
A look behind the curtain for Star Wars and other Disney films is certainly a great opportunity for fans. So many paths are being blazed across the VR industry and companies are trying to put their hardware in the best positions to succeed. Having Nokia’s 360-degree camera attached to a media powerhouse such as Disney is going to be a big win for the camera maker, and won’t escape the gaze of content creators already involved in VR or those that will be as the industry grows.
