Category: agence

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The Amazing World of VR Animation: What to Watch

Battlescar

It’s highly likely that the last piece of virtual reality (VR) content you dived into was a videogame, whether that’s thrashing around in some rhythm-action title or fighting through hordes of enemies saving the day. Look a little deeper and there’s plenty of alternative content to enjoy, and VRFocus recommends exploring some of the excellent animated titles that are available.

Baba Yaga

Animated VR not to miss

When it comes to animation in VR most will fall into one of two categories; short films or interactive pieces. Narrative is art the heart of either of these two but the former takes a more traditional viewing approach, wrapping you in a virtual world where the story plays out. The latter, on the other hand, actively encourages your involvement.

This interactivity can range massively from simple elements to move the story like turning a page to fully-blown control where decisions will offer alternative endings. These tend to blur the lines between what’s considered a animation and an actual videogame.

So what should you be spending your hard-earned money and valuable time on? Well, VRFocus has a few suggestions…

Battlescar

Released only a few short days ago for Oculus Quest and Rift – a Steam version is coming – Battlescar is a 30-minute film based in New York City’s emerging punk subculture during the late 1970’s.

A glorious mix of visuals and audio, the VR short is split across three chapters following Lupe, a young Puerto Rican American teenager who leaves home and meets Debbie in a juvenile detention centre. Together they decide to form their own punk band whilst trying to navigate and survive the mean city streets.

Narrated by actress Rosario Dawson in English and rock singer/actress Jehnny Beth in French, it doesn’t pull any punches, switching between first and third-person viewpoints whilst throwing in tunes from the era by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Death and Lydia Lunch. Exploring a range of topics such as identity and mental health, Battlescar is pure punk animation, short, sharp and in your face.

Battlescar

Baba Yaga

From prolific animation house Baobab Studios, Baba Yaga is an interactive experience exclusive to Oculus Quest, inspired by the Eastern European legend.

Another 30-min experience, rather than simply viewing Baba Yaga you’re cast as Sacha, who alongside her younger sister Magda are the daughters of the village chief. When your mother becomes gravely ill you and your sister enter Baba Yaga’s enchanted forest to seek the cure.

Voiced by an all-star cast including Kate Winslet, Daisy Ridley, Glenn Close and Jennifer Hudson, Baba Yaga provides plenty of interactive elements along the way. Thus encouraging you back to take another peek at this wonderfully engaging experience.

Baba Yaga

Paper Birds

Another from Baobab Studios in collaboration with 3DAR and Oculus, part one of Paper Birds arrived late 2020 for Oculus Quest.

A beautiful synergy of music and visual design, Paper Birds tells the story of young musician Toto (played by Jojo Rabbit star Archie Yates) as he searches for his lost sister.

As an Oculus Quest title Paper Birds is one of a select few on the platform which utilises the headset’s hand tracking functionality, so you don’t need the controllers to interact with this magical world. Paper Birds might only have very light interactivity in comparison to others on this list yet it still provides an enchanting experience. Plus, the second (concluding) part will arrive later in 2021.

Paper Birds

The Line

There’s a reason ARVORE’s The Line has won numerous awards and that’s thanks to its heartwarming narrative, visual layout and interactive elements; almost like you’re playing with a train set.

Compatible with multiple headsets including Oculus Quest, Rift and HTC Vive, The Line is a love story of two miniature dolls, Pedro and Rosa, set within a scale model of 1940s São Paulo. The characters follow tracks which wind through the environment and at certain points you have to push a button or spin a lever to help the tale proceed. If you’re using an Oculus Quest you can swap to hand tracking.

Clocking in at under 20 minutes The Line is a very sweet VR title that pulls on the heart strings. It showcases how these two mediums can work so perfectly together, great for introducing newcomers to the technology.

The Line

Gloomy Eyes

Now back to some pure animation with Gloomy Eyes, written and directed by Fernando Maldonado and Jorge Tereso and co-written by Santiago Amigorena, published by ARTE.

Inspired by Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, Gloomy Eyes is a three-part poetic love story between a zombie boy and a human girl in a town devoid of sunlight. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of prime voice actors willing to work on VR projects, with Gloomy Eyes’ English version narrated by Hollywood actor Colin Farrell.

The entire short just looks stunning, being a joy to watch from start to finish. Much like The Line, thanks to the miniature worlds and characters it’s all too easy to get drawn in, peering deep into this imaginative fantasy world.

Gloomy Eyes

Spice and Wolf VR (1 & 2)

Time for two titles from further afield, Japanese creator Spicy Tails’ Spice and Wolf VR series. Based-on Isuna Hasekura’s original novel and brought to life thanks to crowd-funding campaigns, both of these provide a nice intro into VR anime.

Spice and Wolf VR is the story of travelling merchant Kraft Lawrence who meets a 600-year old wolf-deity named Holo on his travels. The sequel then sees them both settling down, welcoming their daughter Myuri into the world.

The main draw here is the finely detailed animation which looks stunning in VR, just be aware that it is all in Japanese with English subtitles and they’re quite expensive in comparison to other on this list. If you do love Japanese anime they’re well worth a look, plus they both have light interactive elements which add further depth.

ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos

The one title on the list which really skirts the line between animation and videogame, ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is Japanese anime with a massive amount of replayability.

ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is by far the grandest title on this list, a visual novel with hours and hours of content depending on how far you wish to delve. It’s kind of like watching a comic book rather than a film, so all the characters jump between frames and you can set the dialogue to autoplay or select through when you choose to. You also have the choice of English voice over if subtitles aren’t your thing.

Set 200 years from now, the Earth has been decimated by giant alien beings called Meteora with mankind now living underground. You’re part of an elite squad who pilot giant mechs called Makhia to defend what’s left of mankind. These encounters are where most of the interactivity takes place, where you can activate shields and fire railguns. These sequences tend to be where the storyline splits, revealing more of the narrative should you return. ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos is big, bold, and the most definitive VR visual novel from Japan yet.

ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos

Agence

Described by creators Transitional Forms and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) as a ‘dynamic film’, Agence is possibly the most unusual of all these here as it marries a basic story with AI to provide a piece of content with endless possibilities.

Each time you step into Agence it’ll be different, viewing a digital realm where five ‘Agents’ run around a small world. But Agence employs two thought processes for the Agents which can be switched on and off. A gameplay AI which follows certain patterns or Reinforcement Learning AI which Transitional Forms has built over years, where the Agents will interact in unknown ways.

You can also affect the world by picking the Agents up or planting a flower for them to investigate. Each run-through will only last about 5 minutes but captivating enough to keep returning and experimenting with their existence.

Agence

There are plenty of other excellent VR animated titles out there, all of which VRFocus encourages you to see.

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AI-Driven Dynamic Filmmaking is the Future

Agence

In a simulation, driven by simple rules, we meet artificially intelligent creatures, called “Agents” who live on their planet, cooperating to survive. That is until you arrive with the power to maintain the balance of their peaceful existence, or, you can throw them into a state of chaos. The choice is yours, what will you do with the responsibility of your agency?

Agence

Agence (from Transitional Forms and the National Film Board of Canada) is an experience that uses real-time technology, artificial intelligence (Reinforcement Learning) and user agency to craft a story that is never the same twice. Through collaborative authorship, we are able to drive emergent behaviour and storytelling with each viewing, which we’ve coined as a “Dynamic Film”.

What is a Dynamic Film?

One of the most incredible notions we can attribute to storytelling is that it is ultimately responsible for shaping human history. Over time, we have developed empathy and compassion around being able to interpret the world from another’s point of view. A Dynamic Film is an experience that puts the user at the centre of a powerful story and lets them affect it in realtime.

Isn’t that a videogame? Well, yes, but no. Yes, it certainly sounds like a videogame in nature in terms of interactivity, immersion, and real-time decisions, but the objective is different. Games are often rooted in goals, points or achievements. That isn’t to say they don’t have a story, but too often their goal is not to craft, or discover a narrative.

Agence

As a filmmaker who grew up on videogames, I can say, there is a deeply rooted, cultural foundation, that games need goals. So, when we’re trying to tell an immersive story, the natural trajectory of audience expectation trends heavily in the direction of achievements. However, a Dynamic Film such as Agence, allows users to interact with emergent narrative without the consequence of winning, failure, progress or defeat. It creates a path to great storytelling with unique outcomes from every interaction. Certainly, videogames are built upon a story as much as any other medium, but we’re taking a much more filmic angle to this definition.

With dynamic media, even if the choices are nuanced and subtle, we are (in part) putting an onus on the individual for what kind of content they will create. As this medium becomes more and more sophisticated, I believe that media will not be a one-way street, it will be an interrelated, interdependent dance between user and algorithm, turning what we now call films and games, into real, living simulations. This will help society grasp the power of each other’s creativity and imaginations, and harness a better future using audience agency.

Crucial to Dynamic Filmmaking is three-way authorship, which allows for humans and intelligent machines to shape each other’s experiences. The narrative is crafted by three parties: 1) the filmmakers, who establish the narrative structure and environment, 2) intelligent “Agents,” using reinforcement learning or scripted (hierarchical state machines) AI, and 3) the viewer, who can interact with the system to affect the simulation. Through collaborative authorship, we can drive emergent behaviour and storytelling with each viewing, creating endless possibilities for narratives to rise to the surface.

Agence

The Intersection of VR and Dynamic Filmmaking

Virtual Reality adds an additional dimension to Dynamic Filmmaking, as it takes you one step closer to a possible reality you can immerse yourself in, and gives us the power to experience what the world might be like in someone else’s shoes. With Agence, we provide the user with the opportunity to understand the responsibility of their own agency. Users become self-reflexive and even emotional at times when an Agent falls off the planet into the nexus below. It’s hard to predict what you will feel as each action and reaction is unique.

We use two types of AI to drive the behaviour of our Agents: Game AI, programmed through heuristic functions, and Reinforcement Learning AI, where neural network “brains” are developed to think autonomously. Outside of the experience, tech-savvy collaborators can actually train Reinforcement Learning brains with resources from our website… any brains submitted will be reviewed with a chance to be featured in the film!

Looking Ahead

I believe that the merging of Dynamic Film with virtual reality experiences will allow us to be closer as a species through rich storytelling. So, in essence, when I think of why Dynamic Filmmaking and VR matters, it really comes down to why the story matters. This new medium allows us to share the same dimensional space as the virtual beings we create, to observe and empathize with these artificially intelligent creatures in ways that previously weren’t possible. In that sense, I believe dynamic stories will allow humans to understand what it means to be machine, and machines what it means to be human.

Agence

The classic rule for futurism, as far as we’re concerned, is to identify patterns in the past that can help predict and/or shape the future. In this case, we wanted to push storytelling forward using more advance artificial intelligence (AI), and we looked to the earliest days of silent films (before dialogue was possible) for inspiration. So, there is a focus on visual storytelling to create algorithms that drive the character behaviour. By emphasizing visual storytelling in projects, we can narrow in on the physical behaviours of AI characters. Looking ahead to the future of Dynamic Filmmaking, we hope to build upon this foundation by adding more dynamics for script, music, and speech generation.

Dynamic Films take the audience on a journey through branching pathways, toward a moment of inner change, making them see the world a little differently than before they began. Games, without a story, do not necessarily move people to transformation outside of winning, losing or simply playing the game perpetually. But stories, particularly the dynamic kind, have the power to influence culture and shape a hopeful future.

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Agence Is A Fascinating VR Deep Dive Into Evolving AI

While speaking to Pietro Gagliano of Transitional Forms and David Oppenheim of the NFB about their new VR film, Agence, Gagliano streams the piece itself. I watch as he toys with the small group of lifeforms named Agents that curiously ramble around a tiny planet.

They’re odd three-legged things that go from goldfishing their way from one side of their tennis ball-sized existence to another to staring at me in bemusement to accidentally – and then angrily – bumping into each other. When the call ends, Gagliano – perhaps unknowingly – leaves the stream going for another 10 or so minutes. I sit, slightly transfixed, continuing to observe the Agents that go on existing in the absence of their newfound virtual deity. It’s a little like discovering life under a microscope.

Agence is a hard thing to pin down. Gagliano, the piece’s director, and Oppenheim, the creative producer, label it as a ‘looping’ and ‘dynamic film’, something that starts right back up again the moment it ends. Every cycle, you can either care for, neglect or straight-up murder the group of five beings that populate the new planet. It’s a little like a god sim, though one that’s more concerned with morality than resource-building. But here’s the really interesting thing: Agents can learn as they exist. You can set some or all of the group to essentially become free-thinking agents with few set parameters on how to act. They’ll also observe and remember their actions, creating data that Transitional Forms can then implement into later builds of the experience to expand upon their creature’s behaviors.

Say you experience three or four cycles, which end either when no Agents are left or other events occur. The Agents you set to learn from these experiences will pass that data back to Transitional Forms and, when you revisit the piece later down the line, you may find the creatures learning from their past actions. Gagliano refers to any interactions you choose to make as ‘interfering’.  “You don’t have to engage because we wanted to use as much filmic language as possible, but you can interfere,” he says.

Meanwhile, the agents that retain the “game AI”, as Gagliano calls it, will continue to “carry the story”. “We’ve designed them to behave in a variety of ways,” he explains. “And it still can be pretty chaotic in terms of like how they react to certain things. Chaotic in a good way.”

Agence 3

The point, the pair say, is to create experiences unique to the player that will continue to grow over the course of Agence’s life. “You can really lean into the interactivity or you can be more of an observer,” Gagliano says. “But regardless, as soon as you influence the planet, in some way, it starts to unravel a particular storyline that’s kind of unfolding in a simulation just for you.”

“And so the intention is that, when we launch, we will, continue to train brains, observing how people are playing through the dynamic film, and then continuing to train brains,” Oppenheim adds. “We’ll also be opening up our tools to the machine learning community to work with us, to train brains that will then be put back into the film.”

Right now, then, there’s a fairly small but fascinating range of options. Left to themselves, Agents may start picking on each other and starting fights amongst the group, retaliating with an aggressive body slam every time they’re wronged. You could pick them up and separate enemies by keeping them away from each other, or find the original culprit and banish them to the abyss below by simply dropping them off the planet. You also have the power to plant flowers that appear to hypnotize curious onlookers, eventually sowing their roots across the planet and claiming its earth as its own.

Not only are Agents learning from these experiences, but it also gives the movie a different message each time you watch it. You could play the role of a protector and stop any bullying, or consider the environmental impacts of creating new plant life that wars with the planet’s existing occupants, for example. As the Agents become more obsessed with the plant, it assumes more control of the planet, potentially creating catastrophe within the community.

“We’ve had people respond from an environmental point of view, from a discrimination point of view from a discovery point of view. Like this, this flower we’ve, we’ve nicknamed it, the MacGuffin after the Hitchcock term,” Gagliano explains. “And we’ve, we’ve kept it very archetypical if that makes sense. And so it may mean something very different to you than it does to David, for example.”

Agence 2

At the heart of it, there is a pretty compelling deeper narrative that runs through every cycle you experience. “Their world has been changed by you,” Gagliano says. “And what we’re trying to do there is a evoke some sense of responsibility for engaging with this planet and trying to improve their existence, but it’s hard to know what will happen.”

He later hits the core point: “Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean that you should.”

And that’s already working to some degree. The pair say they’ve seen lots of people adopting the role of a guardian in playthroughs. In fact Gagliano’s mother never left the first world – she spent 45 minutes separating fights and making sure everyone was safe.

It’s that core thread creating those different storylines not just in a binge gameplay session, but over the course of weeks and months that makes Agence so fascinating. Transitional Forms as a team plans to keep updating the experience with new brains every two weeks or so, but Gagliano also hopes opening the platform up for other engineers to experiment with will create new situations he hadn’t previously envisioned. It also speaks to the emerging narrative of AI’s importance and evolution in the world today. Today, we’re caring for little critters just trying to find their place on a minuscule planet. Tomorrow? “They may be superior in intelligence to us,” Gagliano theorizes. “Not these ones but AI [in general]. And now is the time to start really relating to this artificial life that never asked to be born in the first place that we are responsible for as humans.”

It’ll be intriguing to watch Agence evolve alongside that narrative, whatever scale it reaches. In the near-term, though, I’m just looking forward to hearing about new possibilities within its diorama worlds. “As a director, I’m really looking forward to the new behaviors of the AI creatures to shape the narrative in a new way and surprise,” Gagliano adds. “And we’ve already been surprised by certain things that they do and new storylines that unfold. And that’s really exciting.”

I can’t help but agree. In fact, I’m looking forward to making a little good chaos, myself.

Agence comes to SteamVR today for $2.99 and also supports non-VR and mobile play.

Posted on

Agence Is A Fascinating VR Deep Dive Into Evolving AI

While speaking to Pietro Gagliano of Transitional Forms and David Oppenheim of the NFB about their new VR film, Agence, Gagliano streams the piece itself. I watch as he toys with the small group of lifeforms named Agents that curiously ramble around a tiny planet.

They’re odd three-legged things that go from goldfishing their way from one side of their tennis ball-sized existence to another to staring at me in bemusement to accidentally – and then angrily – bumping into each other. When the call ends, Gagliano – perhaps unknowingly – leaves the stream going for another 10 or so minutes. I sit, slightly transfixed, continuing to observe the Agents that go on existing in the absence of their newfound virtual deity. It’s a little like discovering life under a microscope.

Agence is a hard thing to pin down. Gagliano, the piece’s director, and Oppenheim, the creative producer, label it as a ‘looping’ and ‘dynamic film’, something that starts right back up again the moment it ends. Every cycle, you can either care for, neglect or straight-up murder the group of five beings that populate the new planet. It’s a little like a god sim, though one that’s more concerned with morality than resource-building. But here’s the really interesting thing: Agents can learn as they exist. You can set some or all of the group to essentially become free-thinking agents with few set parameters on how to act. They’ll also observe and remember their actions, creating data that Transitional Forms can then implement into later builds of the experience to expand upon their creature’s behaviors.

Say you experience three or four cycles, which end either when no Agents are left or other events occur. The Agents you set to learn from these experiences will pass that data back to Transitional Forms and, when you revisit the piece later down the line, you may find the creatures learning from their past actions. Gagliano refers to any interactions you choose to make as ‘interfering’.  “You don’t have to engage because we wanted to use as much filmic language as possible, but you can interfere,” he says.

Meanwhile, the agents that retain the “game AI”, as Gagliano calls it, will continue to “carry the story”. “We’ve designed them to behave in a variety of ways,” he explains. “And it still can be pretty chaotic in terms of like how they react to certain things. Chaotic in a good way.”

Agence 3

The point, the pair say, is to create experiences unique to the player that will continue to grow over the course of Agence’s life. “You can really lean into the interactivity or you can be more of an observer,” Gagliano says. “But regardless, as soon as you influence the planet, in some way, it starts to unravel a particular storyline that’s kind of unfolding in a simulation just for you.”

“And so the intention is that, when we launch, we will, continue to train brains, observing how people are playing through the dynamic film, and then continuing to train brains,” Oppenheim adds. “We’ll also be opening up our tools to the machine learning community to work with us, to train brains that will then be put back into the film.”

Right now, then, there’s a fairly small but fascinating range of options. Left to themselves, Agents may start picking on each other and starting fights amongst the group, retaliating with an aggressive body slam every time they’re wronged. You could pick them up and separate enemies by keeping them away from each other, or find the original culprit and banish them to the abyss below by simply dropping them off the planet. You also have the power to plant flowers that appear to hypnotize curious onlookers, eventually sowing their roots across the planet and claiming its earth as its own.

Not only are Agents learning from these experiences, but it also gives the movie a different message each time you watch it. You could play the role of a protector and stop any bullying, or consider the environmental impacts of creating new plant life that wars with the planet’s existing occupants, for example. As the Agents become more obsessed with the plant, it assumes more control of the planet, potentially creating catastrophe within the community.

“We’ve had people respond from an environmental point of view, from a discrimination point of view from a discovery point of view. Like this, this flower we’ve, we’ve nicknamed it, the MacGuffin after the Hitchcock term,” Gagliano explains. “And we’ve, we’ve kept it very archetypical if that makes sense. And so it may mean something very different to you than it does to David, for example.”

Agence 2

At the heart of it, there is a pretty compelling deeper narrative that runs through every cycle you experience. “Their world has been changed by you,” Gagliano says. “And what we’re trying to do there is a evoke some sense of responsibility for engaging with this planet and trying to improve their existence, but it’s hard to know what will happen.”

He later hits the core point: “Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean that you should.”

And that’s already working to some degree. The pair say they’ve seen lots of people adopting the role of a guardian in playthroughs. In fact Gagliano’s mother never left the first world – she spent 45 minutes separating fights and making sure everyone was safe.

It’s that core thread creating those different storylines not just in a binge gameplay session, but over the course of weeks and months that makes Agence so fascinating. Transitional Forms as a team plans to keep updating the experience with new brains every two weeks or so, but Gagliano also hopes opening the platform up for other engineers to experiment with will create new situations he hadn’t previously envisioned. It also speaks to the emerging narrative of AI’s importance and evolution in the world today. Today, we’re caring for little critters just trying to find their place on a minuscule planet. Tomorrow? “They may be superior in intelligence to us,” Gagliano theorizes. “Not these ones but AI [in general]. And now is the time to start really relating to this artificial life that never asked to be born in the first place that we are responsible for as humans.”

It’ll be intriguing to watch Agence evolve alongside that narrative, whatever scale it reaches. In the near-term, though, I’m just looking forward to hearing about new possibilities within its diorama worlds. “As a director, I’m really looking forward to the new behaviors of the AI creatures to shape the narrative in a new way and surprise,” Gagliano adds. “And we’ve already been surprised by certain things that they do and new storylines that unfold. And that’s really exciting.”

I can’t help but agree. In fact, I’m looking forward to making a little good chaos, myself.

Agence comes to SteamVR today for $2.99 and also supports non-VR and mobile play.

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New VR Games September 2020: The Biggest Releases This Month

What are the biggest new VR games for September 2020? Find out in this month’s full rundown!

After a slow August, the year’s releases are picking up steam as we head into the holiday season. September should offer a little something for everyone, from hardcore zombie action in a new Walking Dead VR game to family-friendly party thrills in Cook-Out. Let’s dig in to the new VR games for September 2020.

New VR Games September 2020

Cook-Out: A Sandwich Tale (September 3rd)
Resolution Games – Rift, Quest

cook-out a sandwich tale

Resolution Games’ latest VR party game, Cook-Out, riffs on Overcooked, getting up to four players to work together to make sandwiches as quickly as possible. It promises a hectic good time as ingredients fly and customers, including werewolves, get peckish.

Falcon Age (September 3rd)
Outerloop Games – Quest

A heartfelt adventure telling the story of a girl and her feathered companion, Falcon Age comes to Oculus Quest for the first time. We liked it a lot on PSVR, and have high hopes for this port.

Stride (September 4th, Early Access)
Joy Way – PC VR

The Early Access release of this highly-anticipated Mirror’s Edge VR-lookalike is just around the corner. Stride will come armed with an Endless Mode to try out its brand of VR free-running. We’ve been hands-on with it already, and it shows promise.

Solaris: Offworld Combat (September 24th)
First Contact Entertainment – Rift, Quest

After a last-minute delay in August, Solaris moves its fast-paced multiplayer arena shootouts to the end of September. First Contact was behind the excellent Firewall: Zero Hour, so Solaris should be in safe hands.

Budget Cuts (September 25th)
Neat Corp – PSVR

It’s suffered multiple delays but it looks like September will finally be when we get our hands on the PSVR version of Budget Cuts. Will this seminal stealth title measure up on the platform?

The Walking Dead: Onslaught (September 29th)
Survios – PC VR, PSVR

Another long-delayed game, The Walking Dead: Onslaught impressed up with its return trailer in August, so we have high hopes for this one. Survios is a VR veteran, so fingers crossed it pulls it off.

Agence (TBD)
Transitional Forms – PC VR

First coming to the Venice Film Festival this week, Agence is a new type of VR experience that has players interacting with tiny AI-driven characters. This is definitely one of the more ‘out there’ experiences releasing this month.

What’s your pick of the list for new VR games September 2020? Let us know in the comments below!

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Agence Is A New Experiment In VR AI And Interaction

Agence is a new immersive experience coming to VR, mobile and desktop platforms that uses AI to create an interactive and dynamic story about little characters that inhabit a floating planet.

The project is being co-produced by Transforms and the National Film Board of Canada, and is neither a movie nor a game — it’s somewhere in between. We just debuted some new gameplay from Agence in our UploadVR Showcase: Summer Edition, along with some new info from Transforms developer Pietro Gagliano. You can watch the full segment below.

Speaking about the experience, Gagliano said that it’s “a new form of immersive storytelling that uses artificial intelligence and user agency to drive a real-time narrative.”

It features little creatures living on a floating planet, with whom you’ll be able to interact. Each character has a mind of its own, developed with AI learning systems, so the story will be a dynamic experience shaped by your actions and the brains of each character.

“What’s super cool about it is that we’re developing brains for these characters using reinforcement, learning artificial intelligence, allowing them to think and act for themselves within our dynamic story world,” said Gagliano. “Even though it’s early days in our training efforts, we’re already seeing brains developing that lead to interesting behaviors and different kind of story patterns. We often joke that Agence is becoming an experience that literally has a mind of its own.”

The experience won’t be exclusive to VR headsets — it’s also coming to mobile and PC platforms as well. We don’t have an exact release date at the moment, except that the experience will be launching “soon.” Keep your eyes peeled for more to come.

The post Agence Is A New Experiment In VR AI And Interaction appeared first on UploadVR.