Fans of FOX’s 24 are getting a healthy helping of new this year, with a new series and a new protagonist. For Gear VR owners, there’s a new way to watch it, too.
FOX partnered with Samsung to launch what has to be one of the biggest and most lavishly produced 360 videos yet seen on the latter’s Samsung VR service this week. The Raid, as the clip is called, is not a 360 spin-off of a martial arts movie, but instead a six-minute prequel to the upcoming 24: Legacy, a reboot for the franchise set to premiere on Feb. 5th.
Instead of Kiefer Sutherland’s iconic portrayal as Jack Bauer, the series stars Corey Hawkins as an ex-Army Ranger named Eric Carter that finds himself hunted in a revenge plot after he and his squad carry out an assassination mission on a terrorist leader. Set nine months before the first episode, the 360-degree video shows that mission in action.
It starts off as a fairly intense covert mission, with Rangers silently weaving through a Middle Eastern town. Things quickly descend into videogame-style madness, though, as the crew are spotted and come under heavy fire. The action here is some of the most aggressive, bloody and explosive yet seen in a 360 video, with sparks of yellow bullets ripping past the viewer’s eyes and loud bursts of fire constantly turning your head from one way to the other.
Plot isn’t a huge focus here, though the raid itself plays a major part of the overall story for this season. Much of the piece comes and goes without character interaction, though that isn’t necessarily a problem. The Raid is chock full of explosions and gun fights, making it a thoroughly entertaining action-fest that sticks true to the series’ roots.
Though it’s the best way to see it, you don’t have to own a Gear VR to watch The Raid; it’s also available via Samsung VR’s web portal.
Fans of FOX’s 24 are getting a healthy helping of new this year, with a new series and a new protagonist. For Gear VR owners, there’s a new way to watch it, too.
FOX partnered with Samsung to launch what has to be one of the biggest and most lavishly produced 360 videos yet seen on the latter’s Samsung VR service this week. The Raid, as the clip is called, is not a 360 spin-off of a martial arts movie, but instead a six-minute prequel to the upcoming 24: Legacy, a reboot for the franchise set to premiere on Feb. 5th.
Instead of Kiefer Sutherland’s iconic portrayal as Jack Bauer, the series stars Corey Hawkins as an ex-Army Ranger named Eric Carter that finds himself hunted in a revenge plot after he and his squad carry out an assassination mission on a terrorist leader. Set nine months before the first episode, the 360-degree video shows that mission in action.
It starts off as a fairly intense covert mission, with Rangers silently weaving through a Middle Eastern town. Things quickly descend into videogame-style madness, though, as the crew are spotted and come under heavy fire. The action here is some of the most aggressive, bloody and explosive yet seen in a 360 video, with sparks of yellow bullets ripping past the viewer’s eyes and loud bursts of fire constantly turning your head from one way to the other.
Plot isn’t a huge focus here, though the raid itself plays a major part of the overall story for this season. Much of the piece comes and goes without character interaction, though that isn’t necessarily a problem. The Raid is chock full of explosions and gun fights, making it a thoroughly entertaining action-fest that sticks true to the series’ roots.
Though it’s the best way to see it, you don’t have to own a Gear VR to watch The Raid; it’s also available via Samsung VR’s web portal.
If I had a dollar for every tab open on my computer right now I could afford to eat something besides these mini donuts for lunch (even though they are good for me I suppose). I think I may still have a tab open somewhere with a very malnourished NeoPet on it. That’s how hoarder-esque we can all be when it comes to browsing the web these days.
Opening a new tab happens automatically for most of us. I barely give the new hub time to load before I’ve typed “what does ‘lit’ mean/how to be cool” into Google. But one company is trying to make the experience of a new tab not only memorable, but educational for fans of virtual reality.
Earlier this week, SVRF launched a new Google Chrome extension that transforms each of your newly opened tabs into sweeping 360 photos. According to VRF Co-Founder and CEO Sophia Dominguez:
“As we’ve been building SVRF, we’ve been thinking a lot about how to get people to experience VR/360 on a daily basis and build a routine around it. We realized some of the most under-utilized, ‘immersive’ real-estate is within browser tabs (a big, bright screen that takes up an entire view, that people spend most of their day staring at), so we thought ‘Why not put beautiful 360 content in every tab?”
With SVRF Tabs, you may find yourself actually pausing on each new screen you open in order to see and enjoy the beautiful, interactive vista it has generated. You can then click on the “discover” button to learn more about each of the creator of each 360 photo and see more of their work. Now, a mundane every task is a chance to discover content that you may never otherwise have experienced.
SVRF proper is a search and discovery tool for virtual reality content. The goal of the company is “to help educate and expose consumers to virtual reality by making all virtual reality content easily accessible and searchable through a personalized experience.”
China’s Insta360 has announced its 8K professional virtual reality camera, the Insta360 Pro, to raise the bar for 360-degree VR films.
The company made the announcement at CES 2017, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas this week. The 8K-resolution Insta360 Pro camera is designed for shooting 360 films that can be displayed with virtual reality headsets.
The standalone camera can capture 3D images and videos and is also suitable for livestreaming. It is aimed at professional photo and video creators, as well as non-professionals who demand excellence from the camera they use to pursue their creative visions.
Insta360 Pro uses six independent high-definition lenses. It captures 60-megapixel 360-degree 3D stills and supports both HDR and RAW formats to bring out levels of detail and low-light performance unprecedented in a 360-degree camera of this size.
When recording 4K video, the camera supports up to 100 frames per second. In addition, the VR time-lapse mode adds a new dimension to videos, and the live preview function allows users to get the best angle before shooting.
Insta360 uses real-time image stitching technology and offers both H.264 and H.265 video compression, which substantially improves video quality at the same bit rate.
HD image files can be easily auto-stitched with Insta360 Studio. The company is enhancing the imaging potential of the camera by offering professional 3D 360-degree video that applies the 3D video-capturing capabilities of Hollywood films.
The camera can capture 3D videos in up to 6K (4K in real-time stitching mode). As a standalone camera, it can be used with the dedicated Insta360 Pro iOS and Android apps. It connects via Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or 4G, and it is ready to livestream and share any event instantly on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
“Insta360’s most advanced technology comes together in the Insta360 Pro, the most powerful, all-in-one VR and 3D content capturing platform that empowers you to create the unforgettable,” said Liu Jingkang, Insta360 CEO and founder, in a statement. “Never before has such power been put into an easy-to-use, compact system that enables users to share their VR content live with international audiences.”
The Pro will cost $3000 and will be available on Amazon and Insta360’s official online store later this year. Established in 2014, Shenzhen Arashi Vision Co. is a consumer technology company that goes by the name Insta360.
Strap on a headset and fire up Tyler Hurd’s “Old Friend,” and you’re instantly transported to a world of little green men flailing in time to indie band Future Islands. The experience is beautiful and immersive — for a few minutes, you feel like you’ve left earth and headed to another dimension in a bizarre, whimsical music video.
It’s a feeling that’s not limited to Hurd’s experience, either — plenty of other music-based experiences for tethered devices, such as Impossible Travel Agency, La Peri, and Carry Me all leave the user feeling similarly transported.
Compare these to some of the 360-degree music experiences that were released last year, like “Crown” by Run the Jewels or “Don’t Let Love Go By” by Golden Suits, and you can’t help but feel a little less immersed. Both videos are well-done, filled with great imagery and movement, but there are only so many places either one can take you. If the user moves up and down, the experience is jarring rather than responsive.
There are a limited number of places you can actually look and a handful of actions you can take. But the 360 videos do have one massive upside — anyone with a smartphone and a headset, no matter how cheap, can participate and view them. With tethered devices still prohibitively expensive and cumbersome for the average user, magical experiences like “Old Friend” remain off-limits to most.
After initial apprehension, many in the music world now believe that VR will be an important part of the business going forward. The question now becomes whether they invest in creating 360 content, which is less immersive but more accessible, or tethered content, which is more magical but still much harder to view.
This question doesn’t have to be either/or, and there’s not really a single right answer. “I think both are very important,” says Anthony Batt, the founder of Wevr, which produced “Old Friend.” “A song is a story, and in some cases it works for an artist to really immerse people in it. But in other cases, like the Run the Jewels video, it worked well in 360. In 2017, the bigger focus is going to be getting more musicians into the medium in all different ways, because the medium needs to be vibrant to move forward.”
“The music video is the last true vestige of experimental film making, and that’s an incredible tool for VR filmmakers and musicians looking to make art,” said Jason Koffeman, director of Golden Suits’ video, “Don’t Let Love Go By,” and Head of Content at Moth + Flame. (Full disclosure: I’ve consulted on some projects for Moth+Flame but was not involved in this one.)
“But a music video is also marketing, so the number of eyeballs you get is very important,” he continues. “Room scale experiences are an amazing outlet for art and we’re going to see access there expand. Right now 360 video offers not only more eyeballs [than Oculus or Vive] but we’re seeing 360 video being viewed even more than traditional video. So when an indie band has an amazing song they want to make sure gets viewers in today’s over-saturated media marketplace, 360 video is a great way to sing through the noise.”
For many in the music business, the biggest issue when it comes to determining whether to create tethered or 360 content will be the cost. Video and marketing budgets have dramatically decreased since the heyday of the nineties, and labels and managers often look to brands to supplement costs. Brands, in turn, generally want the most eyeballs on an experience that they can get, and it’s hard to get those eyes in a device that has limited distribution.
Some use cases in music also just aren’t feasible in a tethered environment. Watching a live concert in VR, for instance, would be fantastically complicated to do on a Vive or a Rift; even though the experience is slightly less immersive it’s still much more practical to do in 360. Massive activations at live shows also won’t work in a tethered environment; it makes far more sense to have users pick up cheaper headsets at the front door and watch 360 videos during specific songs as opposed to creating a world where only a few can participate. The exception to this might be an experience like EMA’s “I Wanna Destroy,” where one person sits in the headset while others watch the artist perform and the user’s experience is projected for the audience to see. Even in this case, it only works in a small performance space where every user eventually has the opportunity to participate and doesn’t scale up to an arena show.
One place where tethered music experiences can work well is in the live activation space, particularly at festivals. Anyone who does a loop of Coachella or Bonnaroo this summer should expect to see brands setting up booths that feature tethered experiences, many of which will probably feature some sort of social component. One of the most interesting experiences at Future of Storytelling in 2016 was “Flock,” where users participated in an immersive world as birds and interacted with one another — a few tweaks and that could easily be a music-driven dance party.
And as far as purely artistic pieces go, the tethered experience does allow for a level of creative freedom that a 360 video just can’t at this point. “In my mind, it’s more important for people to see the art as it was intended, even if the availability is limited,” says Tyler Hurd, who created “Old Friend.” Hurd also said he expects that within a few years, technology will advance to the point that people can have tethered experiences wirelessly and what could have once only been viewed on an expensive machine will be available to the general public.
It seems the tethered versus mobile debate simply comes down to a few factors — what story do you want to tell; how much money do you have to tell it; and how many people do you want to see the experience? As music becomes more of a creative force in the VR world, the most important thing will be creating great content and getting it in front of as many people as possible, whatever form it ultimately takes.
So Christmas is over, New Year’s has come and gone, and it’s back to our regularly scheduled programming. But we do have one cure for the post-festive blues.
The BBC was kind enough to record London’s epic New Year’s Eve fireworks show in 360 degrees this year. For those that don’t know, it’s become a tradition for family and friends to gather at the River Thames, just opposite the Millennium Eye (the big round thing) and a little ways down from Big Ben (the big clock thing) and countdown to midnight. When the clock strikes twelve, untold amounts of money (over 12,000 fireworks) are blown up in a decadent display of bright lights and big bangs.
This year’s display was no exception, and you can now grab a Google Cardboard, Daydream View, or other mobile VR headset and watch the proceedings as if you were really there. Big Ben starts its thunderous clanging at about 9 minutes in, and then you’re treated to different views of the blinding show. The soundtrack pays tribute to some of 2016’s fallen icons, meanwhile, including Prince and David Bowie.
The event was attended by over 110,000 people. Not many of them will have gotten a view this good. And you’re not cold or bundled up with a bunch of other people. The future is good, isn’t it?
The BBC is steadily getting much more involved with the VR industry. On top of 360 videos such as this, the organisation also has full VR experiences like The Turning Forest, which released on Daydream late last year, and Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel, a fascinating VR documentary detailing the account of one survivor of the Easter Rising uprising in Ireland over 100 years ago.
These were some of the most unique and intriguing uses of VR I saw in 2016. Let’s hope the organisation has plenty more to offer VR in the New Year.
Featured image: President Barack Obama watching a virtual reality film captured during his trip to Yosemite National Park in 2016.
Going outside in winter can be…well, terrifying. Luckily, makers of Virtual Reality have created amazing pieces for us to watch while buried in our big blanket/sack hybrids. (Snuggies? Snoogies? Whatever they are, I am definitely wearing one while writing this.)
In all sincerity: our natural world is a gift that should not be overlooked, and our media should encourage us to engage with it, rather than isolate ourselves from it. It’s imperative that we cherish the land around us, and this impulse is what has pushed many creators to use VR in service of conservation. Here’s a selection of videos that helps inspire awe and appreciation for nature and hopefully inspire us to drop the headset, put on our puffy coats, and explore.
Be A T.Rex In VR
VSauce2
Produced by: 2Bit Circus
Directed by: Jessica Kantor
This is not a conservation video per se, but it is a wonderful fusion of natural landscapes and science education. Learn about being a “Tyrant Lizard King” (T-Rex) while watching Kevin Lieber (Vsauce2) fear for his life. Various objects (a bus, a basketball hoop etc) are presented around you to provide a sense of scale. 2Bit Circus has a wonderful sense of “play” in the medium and this video is no exception. This was filmed in the El Mirage dry lake riverbed (an hour outside Los Angeles) and the synergy between the real land and animated objects is seamless. Kids old enough for VR will love this one.
Through the Ages: President Obama Celebrates America’s National Parks
National Geographic and Oculus
Produced by: Felix & Paul
The sound design in this experience is remarkable –the chirping of birds and scurrying of wildlife are as sharp as the video quality. There is something to be said for investing in high production values in VR. This is not just a 360 experience — it captures a time and place in American history. Having President Obama as part of the video adds an unprecedented gravitas to the experience, but on its own it still stands as one of the finest depictions of the national parks ever recorded.
Valen’s Reef
Conservation International
Produced by: Here Be Dragons
Tour the Bird’s Head Seascape in Indonesia with Ronald Mambrasar and his son, Valen. Bird’s Head is one of the great success stories in community-led conservation, and this video shows how we can work together to reverse habitat destruction. Seeing a desolate reef compared with a living one will stay with you long after the experience. Having Ronald narrate directly to his son is an emotional and great choice. No, that’s not headset fatigue– you might get actual tears in your eyes from this one.
LA River VR Experience (Trailer 1)
Friends of Los Angeles River
Join Los Angeles’ Mayor Eric Garcetti for a tour down the LA River. What was once a maze of concrete and oily puddles is being revitalized into a living river for the city. In the video, you can explore areas of the river not typically accessible to the public, giving the viewer a sense of adventure.This is a great example of using VR on a civic level to educate and incite change. (Also, how even in cities, nature is all around us.)
360 VR timelapse footage of the Aurora Borealis over Kashwitna Lake, Alaska
By William Briscoe Photography
Unreal and enchanting — this kind of footage makes a case for bringing your 360 cameras wherever you travel. The Aurora Borealis is considered one of the wonders of the natural world, and here you can see it in all its glory from the comfort of your own home. It feels almost decadent to put this into a headset and space out in a green glow for a few minutes. Do it anyway.
Maggie Lane is a writer/producer in the VR space. She has a television and film background, most recently developing content for Weta Workshop. Follow her on Twitter @maggielane27 or @maggiehlane on Instagram.
Over the years there have been a lot of pieces of entertainment content, whether it be the mesmerizing tunes of Daft Punk, the dystopian world of Blade Runner, or the retro-futuristic landscapes of countless video games, that all seem to grow out of this idea of an eye-catching future that is still faced with horrible problems. Cyberpunk, too, is a whole subgenre devoted to the idea of high technology in an oppressive society.
Escape Code is a 360-degree short film directed and animated by Josh Hassin and the San Diego, CA based studio, Look Mister that seems inspired by many of these ideas. The entire short film, embedded below, was created in Unity and is driven by a synthwave soundtrack scored by Emmy award winning composer RAD LAZER (aka Rafter Roberts).
Leading up to the short film’s debut, UploadVR interviewed Hassin about the project, its inspirations, and his views on the current immersive technology industry as a whole.
UploadVR: You listed the themes and inspirations, but what do you think the message is of Escape Code, more specifically?
Josh Hassin: The film is really more of a teaser than a full narrative. I don’t want to give too much away, but essentially Jonas (our hero) is a computer hacker, and accesses a government database that acknowledges the existence of aliens. The aliens reach out to Jonas as an ally. They communicate through a sort of metaphysical ESP, which takes over his body and allows him to see the “truth.” Heavy stuff. But yeah I’m interested in Aliens and conspiracy theories, and I’m a child of the ’80s so that’s all in there.
UploadVR: What can you tell us about the shades-wearing main character we see throughout the short film?
Josh Hassin: Jonas is our reluctant hero. He’s a hacker and unwittingly accesses a government database. He essentially uncovers a plot to hide the existence of alien lifeforms from the general public. He’s a badass, but would probably rather be playing video games than hiding from the cops.
UploadVR: Why did you choose to make this entirely in Unity?
Josh Hassin: I come from a background making video games for Sony and others. I have always loved working with game engines and the godlike power they give creators. Traditionally, game engines were a rather esoteric tool that mostly required you to be a coder to use. Unity changed that. It’s extremely user friendly and has a great community of users who aren’t afraid to share their tools. Over the last few years my studio, Look Mister, had fallen into doing a lot more pre-rendered animation, and that takes a lot of time and money (graphics cards, render farms, etc.) So I was really excited about being able to do something in real-time. Unity has really leveled the playing field and has allowed small teams and individuals such as myself to create really engaging content, be that for games, apps, or films..
UploadVR: Were there any considerations to create an interactive version, or was it decided to be a 360-degree video from the start?
Josh Hassin: We are definitely interested in pursuing an interactive version. Again this is another strength that Unity brought to the project. Much of what you see on screen is a simulation. All the riots, are AI driven, the motorcycle scenes, are completely controllable in Unity. So yeah the next logical extension is to give people control of this universe.
UploadVR: What else have you and your team worked on, both in and outside of VR?
Josh Hassin: As I mentioned before I come from a background of making games, and then fell into marketing video games. I also have a deep love for music (as I think do most people who sit at a computer most of their day) but that has lead me to some interesting music video projects. I try to keep my projects diverse so that I don’t get bored, but two highlights have been the puppet based project i did with some folks from Sesame Street/Crank Yankers and the music video I did for Michael Andrews, where I had 100s of high school students draw 1000s of frames of animation.
I’m really interested in exploring new forms of expression, and now VR/AR/MR are just new ways of doing that. We are working on a new AR app called Lookit that we really think is going to change the way people create and interact with AR and their environments, its all very exciting.
UploadVR: What are some of the best 360-degree video projects you’ve seen so far?
Josh Hassin: Well for 360 video I would say, that the guys at Within (Chris Milk and Co) have been very inspiring . I think Pearl by Google/Patrick Osborne ,was really the first animated 360 video that gave me chills. I also think the work the Jaunt folks are putting out is top notch.
Outside of 360 video I’d have to say that using the Tilt Brush on the HTC Vive has been a mind blowing experience and that viewing Google Earth in VR , was really a game changer. 2017 is going to be an exciting year!
For more on Escape Code, you can follow the film’s official Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram social media accounts. You can see the full film embedded at the top of this story and over on the official YouTube here.
As we’ve reported multiple times in the past few months, IMAX’s location-based pilot centers for its VR experiences were planned for launch this year. As you may have guessed, things haven’t quite worked out that way.
One of the first pilot tester centers, set to open in an Odeon cinemia in the UK city of Manchester, has been delayed from late 2016 into early 2017. That is according to a report from The Verge that cites an IMAX spokesperson. We’ve reached out to the company to verify the statement multiple times, but haven’t heard anything back thus far. A more specific date has not been given but we’ll be sure to update you.
These centers will be using Starbreeze’s StarVR headset, which began shipping earlier this year. Manufactured with the help of Acer, it features a 210 degree field of view, six degrees of positional tracking, and two 5.5 inch, showing 2560×1440 pixels per eye.
While they’ll initially be launching with experiences we’ve already seen on the device like Overkill’s The Walking Dead VR Experience, the plan is to eventually have content that ties in to current movie releases and offer movie-goers the chance to see both the movie and the VR experience or either one separated from the other. VR pieces will last between five to 15 minutes, making them more like companion pieces to full movies rather than sequels.
Other pilot centers are planned for Los Angeles and London among other cities.
You can still expect to see some significant content come to these centers, though; last month IMAX announced that it was spending $50 million to fund VR experiences, aiming to create 25 interactive VR pieces at first. This time next year we could hopefully see some VR tie-ins to major blockbusters being shot with IMAX’s own VR cameras, made with the help of Google.
McKenzie Stubbert is a resident composer for original VR films from Within, and is responsible for the scores behind more than 20 VR films so far, including The Displaced and Clouds Over Sidra.
With McKenzie’s extensive experience, we thought it might be helpful to explore some of the things that have been learned about sound in VR over the course of all those projects, and asked Stubbert some questions over email.
Upload: Are there any significant things you note others frequently do wrong when it comes to music in VR?
MS: We are in such an experimental age that I believe the only thing you can “do wrong” is skip the opportunity to incorporate original music. As we try to figure out the current and future role of music in VR, every opportunity to incorporate it – as a creative participant in interactive experiences – is one that gets us closer to knowing what does and doesn’t work. Thinking about things in terms of ‘right and wrong’ inhibits breakthroughs during experimentation.
Upload: Can you point me to 2-3 projects that display different advances in the way music is integrated into an experience?
MS: My favorite piece of music by far is Jonny Greenwood’s score for Mike Tucker’s beautiful VR piece “Tana Pura”. It’s one of those marvelous experiences that will no doubt seem very simplistic one day, but conveys a sense of what being “inside” of music feels like. “La Peri” is obviously an older piece of music (it’s from a ballet by the great French composer, Paul Dukas), but it pulls you inside of the ballet as both a participant and viewer in what I would consider a new way.
What’s great about VR is that we have an opportunity to return to a less literal artistic experience. Cinema enabled us to tell stories that resembled real life so well that mainstream culture moved away from things like ballet. I’m looking forward to seeing how people take older, more abstract art forms and explore them in this new context.
UploadVR: What sort of study do you do, or inspiration do you pull from, when thinking about a music project for VR? Are there other works that have inspired you?
MS: My life is full of studying and looking for inspiration. I continue to practice instruments, learn new recording/mixing techniques, study traditional orchestration while applying programming knowledge gleaned from years of making samples sound exactly as I want them. I also read a lot– and watch films/TV/VR like anyone. As my work deals in the conversion of emotion into music, the fact that it may or may not be in VR doesn’t change the inspiration of that. It’s the needs of the medium that is different with VR. And that is ever evolving and changing as we move forward.
UploadVR: What about things like branching stories or responsive storytelling that activate elements only when you look at them — is that something you are working with in your music in any way? Can you provide examples if so?
MS: This a pretty secretive business, so I’m not usually allowed to speak specifically about projects until they are released, but yes, absolutely. In the same way 360° pieces are inspired by traditional cinema, interactive experiences are naturally inspired by video games. It can be hard to think of solutions outside of those two giant creative mediums, but everyone is trying. Getting composers involved as early in the process as possible allows for the existing techniques to be experimented with, just like visuals and sound design. This is the great hallway we are all going down as we incorporate the 360° with real-time rendering and gaze-based sequences and I can’t wait to share with you what I’ve been working on. The future is happening – slowly, but surely.
