SXSW 2018 – Page 2 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

March 2, 2018

Ready Player One VR Experience Announced For SXSW

Attendees of this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) will be able to get a taste of the upcoming release of Steven Spielberg’s new action adventure, Ready Player One, in a virtual reality (VR) experience.

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The release of the upcoming film is set for 29th March and in anticipation Ready Player One will be taking over the Brazos Hall, with a two-story experience. Included in the experience will be exciting VR content on a HTC Vive unit that allows visitors to create their own digital identity in the Ready Player One Avatar Creator. Once created, the digital recreation of themselves will be sent to their email so they can use it to their heart’s content.

The Ready Player One Experience starts outside where the exterior of the Brazos Hall is set to be transformed into the Stacks, the vertical trailer park which is the home of the main character in Ready Player One. Once a visitor has received their personal radio-frequency identification (RFID) wristband, they will be able to enter through another location from the film, Wade Watts’ Van, and then enter the OASIS where the real meat of the experience is found. The RFID wristbands will also keep score of visitors knowledge of ’80s trivia, arcade games or found hidden clues. These will be compiled into a leaderboard to win fun prizes including the grand prize of a HTC Vive.

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Also at the Ready Player One Experience plenty of sights and sounds for visitors to explore. This includes a Hot Topic Ready Player One Pop-Up, The Distracted Globe, 2045’s hottest nightclub that will offer plenty of Ready Player One themed cocktails and a stage packed with DJs and performers. On Sunday, 11th March, the venue will also hold a livestream, Ready Player One LIVE at SXSW, powered by Twitch and IMBb and will feature some of the stars and filmmakers from Ready Player One, hosted by Aisha Tyler and correspondent Alex Correa.

The Ready Player One Experience at SXSW will be open from Friday, 9th March until Sunday, 11th March. The SXSW conference will continue on until the 18th March, 2018.

For more on VR exhibitions and content keep reading VRFocus.

February 10, 2018

Australian VR Film ‘Awake’ To Premiere At South By Southwest 2018

More and more film makers are turning to virtual reality (VR) technology to bring their audience closer to powerful and personal subjects. Empathy is just one of the benefits of experiencing film and video in VR, and documentaries such as The Choice are taking advantage of that. Now, Awake is heading to South by Southwest (SXSW) to premiere.

We’ve reported on Awake previously. The VR film is being directed by Start VR’s Chief Content Officer Martin Taylor, who has been working on the project for several years. The project has support from several large companies, including Screen Australia, HTC Vive, Animal Logic and Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture.

The film is set to premiere at SXSW 2018. It’s the first time a VR film from Australia has had the chance to premiere at the event. Hopefully it will lead to further recognition of the Australian VR scene in the future.

Awake star Jake McDorman and Analeigh Tipton, and it takes audiences into an immersive and vivd dreamscape and that bends the concepts of space, time, and reality. It explores the human psyche at its most vulnerable through the character-driven narrative.

McDorman plays Harry, an isolated man still suffering after being widowed. Throughout the Awake series, audiences will follow Harry as he goes from a prisoner in his own home, haunted by the memories of his wife Rose, played by Tipton, and obsessed with a cryptic message.

Mike Jones of VR Noir, The Kettering Incident and Deadlock also helped in the production, along with Christian Cantamessa, who worked on Red Dead Redemption, Shadows of Mordor and AIR. The experts of the digital VR worlds and character driven narratives come together in Awake to bring players closer to the characters than ever before.

Attendees at SXSW 2018 will be able to view Awake at the Virtual Cinema area, a space dedicated to VR, augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) storytelling.

It’s good to see SXSW’s continued dedicated to VR media, and Awake’s inclusion at the event will no doubt invigorate the Australian VR scene. Once we see Awake for ourselves, and should we hear anything more about it, you’ll be sure to read it all here first on VRFocus.

January 31, 2018

Sony To Exhibit Immersive Technologies At SXSW

One of the biggest festivals dedicated to the creative aspects of business,SXSW, also known as South by Southwest is due to be help on 9th-18th March, 2018 in Austin, Texas. Sony have announced that they will be there showcasing some of its new immersive technology projects for attendees.

Sony will be displaying some new projects and products during the interactive festival on Saturday 10th March. Sony is hoping that the new immersive projects will appeal to the creativity of the audience as well as offering excitement.

Several prototypes and early versions will be showcased, including:

AR Air Hockey – An air hockey experience that combines the classic fast-paces arcade game with modern augmented reality (AR) technology. By using Sony’s high-speed vision sensor, the IMX 382 along with a proprietary prediction algorithm and haptic feedback technology it is possible to track the action within a 1/1000 of a second. The exhibition will be showing off how it is possible to play air hockey without needing a physical table.

Hero Generator – Visitors can create their own personalised virtual reality (VR) avatar, view it from everyy angle and even experience a short film with their own ovatar as the main character. Visitors will even be able to save the video to their smartphone and take it home to share it with friends and family.

Interactive Cube – By utilising haptic feedback technology and prjections, visitors will be able to enjoy a variety of interactive mixed reality (MR) games.

Soccer VR – A soccer, or football, goal-scoring experience created as a collaboration between Sony Music Communications and Hassilas Co.

Acoustic Corridor – Combining music with Sony’s spatial acoustic technology, visitors to the exhibition will be able to travel down a corridor that uses 576 speakers to create an immersive sound experience that transports visitors from the city to the forest and even to outer space.

Further information and tickets for SXSW can be found on the official SXSW website. For further news of new immersive technology, keep watching VRFocus.

December 11, 2017

Exploring America’s Ghost Trains in VR Documentary

The Ghost Train amusement park ride concept has existed for decades, with a huge number of variants existing all over the world, and spawning its own amusement park sub-genre of the ‘dark ride’. Documentary filmmaker Joel Zika is creating a virtual reality (VR) documentary showing his experiences with rides in this genre.

The VR documentary has been structured as a TV show, going by the title American Dark Ride. The project was funded by enthusiastic supporters who previously clubbed together to create a VR archive of Dark Rides. A production team from Entertainment One have also been recruited to bring the project to a larger audience.

There will be sixteen VR episodes to accompany the ten 21-min HD episodes. There will also be on-ride footage, and interviews with amusement park enthusiasts and ride creators. The show will cover a range of rides from some of the oldest in America to some brand-new takes on the concept.

“Every time a ride shuts down we lose a generation of memories, this show helps us share these experiences with the world and create a record for future generations.” Said Zika.

Stephan Grambart, the first VR director to win an Emmy said of the project “Joel’s use of 360 video to capture this vanishing piece of theme park history presents an ideal use case for this technology. As access to these rides becomes a rarity, the best means of capturing the full experience is through virtual reality.”

The team behind the project, including Joel Zika, plan to showcase the first episode of American Dark Ride, in both HD and VR formats, at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas in 2018, where Zika will be discussing not only the VR project but also the history and impact of haunted rides on new media storytelling.

A trailer for American Dark Ride is available to view below.

VRFocus will bring you further news on American Dark Ride as it becomes available.