Using state-of-the-art photogrammetry technology with millimeter accuracy, Simon Che de Boer of Reality Virtual and Experius VR have digitally scanned Nerfertari’s tomb, letting owners of Vive, Rift, and Windows VR headsets step inside the fabled burial site and learn about the over 3,000 year-old Egyptian queen’s life, religion, and culture.
Nefertari was an Egyptian queen who died around 1255 BCE, and as the first of the Great Royal Wives of Ramesses the Great, her death was commemorated in the same way many Egyptian nobles were at the time: entombed in a lavish underground structure tucked deep into the hills of the Valley of the Queens in southern Egypt.
The VR tour shows you Queen Nefertari’s tomb in a way no other person has seen it in a century, lit by oil lamps and devoid of artificial lighting—except for your hand-held flashlights, giving you the sense that you’re truly discovering the 520 square meter tomb far away from modern-day tourist groups.
Image courtesy Experius VR
While the 360 video below is actual footage captured from within the tomb, VR users are treated to a decidedly more realistic version, replete with textured walls that appear so real you might actually be able to accidentally chip away the 3,000 year-old paint. As you teleport around the tomb, you can also activate a helpful guide who explains the more important images of both the gods and Nefertari and what they meant in her culture.
Nefertari: Journey to Eternity (2018) is free on Steam and Viveport, offering a prescient glance at what the future of photogrammetry can provide VR users.
VR headset users now have a chance to walk into an interactive version of HBO’s Silicon Valley house. The Palo Alto home, which is owned by the series’ eccentric startup guru Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller), was lovingly recreated in VR, replete with ‘always blue’ ball, foosball, and yes, even a bong.
Update (05/12/18): First released on Viveport, for HTC Vive, the free ‘Silicon Valley: Inside the Hacker Hostel’ experience is now available on Oculus Rift for US-based users. The release on Rift precedes the show’s season finale, coming May 13th.
The original article follows below:
Original article (03/24/18): Called Silicon Valley: Inside the Hacker Hostel, the experience is landing on Viveport March 25th, giving you a chance to walk around the house and fulfill objectives given to you by the show’s characters – Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) and Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani).
According development studio Rewind, you’ll have one-on-one encounters with Dinesh, Gilfoyle, Richard (Thomas Middleditch), Big Head (Josh Brener) and Jian-Yang (Jimmy O. Yang). You’ll be able to demo the show’s infamous Not Hot Dog app and find a secret message from Jared, and help Richard out of a coding crisis. Rewind says there are 756 items to interact with.
Silicon Valley: Inside the Hacker Hostel was created in promotion of the TV show’s upcoming fifth season which starts tomorrow, March 25th.
The Tribeca Film Festival starts next month, an annual screening of everything from indie documentaries to family-friendly films. Coming to the festival’s Immersive program, which showcases works by artists who are pushing boundaries and using cutting-edge technology, are six Oculus-funded projects.
Many of the projects funded by Oculus came out of the company’s VR For Good program, which sees funding and expertise in VR film making go to causes for social change.
A total of 21 AR/VR projects are coming to the film festival (check out the full list here). Here’s all of the Oculus-funded projects heading to Tribeca next month:
Meeting a Monster
image courtesy Oculus
Gabriela Arp + Life After Hate:Meeting a Monster examines the memories and motivations of former white supremacist Angela King. Through audio recordings, dramatic re-enactments, and present-day footage, the film invites us to experience both the stereotypes and bigotry that lured Angela into the white power movement as well as the encounters that led her back out. While the monsters of Angela’s past and imagination define much of the eight years she spent mired in bias and hate, she finds the path to redemption only after encountering and acknowledging the ultimate monster—herself.
The Hidden
image courtesy Oculus
Lindsay Branham + International Justice Mission: In southern India, debt bondage enslaves entire families in a vicious cycle of deception and violence. The Hidden follows the developing case of a family of nine that has been enslaved in a rock quarry for 10 years—over the ludicrous sum of just $70 USD. Indian government representatives and human rights activists plot a raid to attempt to apprehend the creditor and free the family. The Hidden takes you to sites of active slavery and inside the rescue mission itself, bringing you face-to-face with two families as they endure the unspeakable.
Authentically Us: She Flies By Her Own Wings
image courtesy Oculus
Jesse Ayala + Pride Foundation:Even as transgender visibility in pop culture continues to break glass ceilings, direct violence and discriminatory legislation against the transgender community continues to rise. Shannon Scott stands up at a time when her communities—proud transgender service-people and veterans of the US Armed Forces—are vulnerable and under attack. Shannon has dedicated her entire adult life to defending and safeguarding American citizens at home and abroad. Driven by the military tenet of “Leave No One Behind,” she seeks freedom and justice for all from the marbled halls of Washington, DC, to the hallowed ground of those who championed equality before her.
Campfire Creepers: Midnight March
image courtesy Oculus
Directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, The Hills Have Eyes) and starring iconic ’80s horror icon Robert Englund of Freddy Krueger fame, this episodic narrative from Future Lighthouse and Dark Corner leverages the unique affordances of VR storytelling to chill and thrill audiences like never before.
Untitled Ok Go & WITHIN Project
image courtesy Oculus
WITHIN Founder and CEO Chris Milk joins forces with OK Go’s Damian Kulash to let you and a friend experience the joy of music creation. Enter an environment surrounded by magical music-making contraptions, involving animals and robots wondrously working together with your help to create an original song.
SPHERES: Pale Blue Dot
image courtesy Oculus
The Big Bang was silent. Then came sound. Journey through the history of sound in the Universe and uncover the strangest song of all. Following the premiere of the first episode of SPHERES at Sundance, Eliza McNitt returns to debut the second installment at Tribeca. And with an unprecedented deal signed as a result of the project’s first public showing, we can’t wait to see what the encore has in store.
BBC Worldwide and Google have partnered to bring a new BBC Earth VR experience to Daydream. Dubbed BBC Earth: Life in VR, the computer generated experience takes the user to the Californian coast, and the bustling underwater world filled with sea life nearby.
Production studio Preloaded says that much like a conventional documentary, Life in VR has a “strong narrative voice to tell a core story,” but critically features an open world design that they say both provides “agency and rewards exploration.” Preloaded also says the experience was meticulously researched, and designed with VR newcomers in mind.
The educational experience boasts a number of popular animals which were featured in the BBC Blue Planet TV series, including sea otters, giant squids, great white sharks and sperm whales. You’ll even get a chance to shrink down in size to see microscopic sea life in action.
You can download BBC Earth: Life in VR here for free.
I AM A MAN is an interactive VR experience that lets you participate in the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike and the events leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Created by Dr. Derek Ham, an assistant professor of Graphic Design at NC State University, I AM A MAN was a winner of Oculus’ 2017 Launch Pad, a program designed to help fund VR content from diverse backgrounds.
Update (05/05/18): Derek Ham’s ‘I AM A MAN’ is now available for free on Oculus Rift.
Our original preview, which takes you through the entire experience, follows below:
Original article (02/08/18): It’s a natural thing to look at your own hands in VR. Maybe it’s to establish yourself in the virtual world, or maybe it’s just to see how the developers envisioned one of the most personal things in your possession. Appearing in an alley with two trash cans by my side, I peer down to see a pair of black hands. Of course, they’re no more ‘black’ than my physical hands are ‘white’. Outside of VR, my hands are actually a pale pink color, and my new ‘black’ hands are actually a soft brown that lightens near the palms and the finger tips. When it comes to race, I rely on the imperfect words that resonate with the historical context; both the laughably imprecise and shockingly hateful ones that existed both then and now.
image courtesy Dr. Derek Ham
I AM A MAN transports you to 1968 Memphis, Tennessee, where you, a sanitation worker, are put at the heart of the struggle for equality. Spliced within the interactive elements of the experience, which include dumping trash, reading news clippings, and watching historical TV broadcasts, I see photos and hear audio from an actual worker who speaks about how they suffered unpaid overtime, no sick leave, and how they were meant to feel utterly replaceable at every turn. I learned how the city’s sanitation workers, who were almost exclusively black, would routinely be relegated to the lowest-paying jobs and never given a chance to rise to the role of a heavy equipment operator, a superior, better-paying position reserved for whites. These, I would learn, would form the main arguments behind the creation of the sanitation worker’s labor union and the resultant strike that shook not only Memphis, but unwittingly played as backdrop to MLK’s assassination.
Reading a few historical newspaper clippings in my kitchen, a TV program plays in the corner. I’m not sure where the program is from, but it feels like a public opinion piece on the nightly news.
“If I’m a business man, and people who I do not want in my business insist on either coming in, or boycotting – which is in their perfect right to do – then certainly it’s not going to make me love them,” a well-dressed man explains.
image courtesy Dr. Derek Ham
“A lion might like another lion better than he’d like a bear. That’s just like white people and niggers. I mean, white people are going to naturally like white people better than they do niggers,” a young man says sheepishly.
“It’s just not the things we’re used to down here,” a stone-faced 20-something says. “They come in and they sit down, and we’re not used to them sitting down beside us, because I wadn’t raised with ’em, I never had lived with ’em, and I’m not going to start now.”
The screen fades to black, and I’m back in the void where historical photos spin around me. The un-named sanitation worker continues:
“Sometimes you would get threats—’nigger, go back to work’—and this kind of thing […] all it means is a man is not a man. Whatever you say, or however you put it, when it comes down to that, a man is not a man, and he don’t have anything to say about his hours and working conditions.”
More interactive vignettes show me the picketers wearing the movement’s iconic placards reading ‘I AM A MAN’. An armored personnel carrier rolls down the street, soldiers glaring at me as I pick up my own ‘I AM A MAN’ sign.
Then MLK enters the story. “People had faith and confidence in him,” the worker says. I can see him placidly standing at the Lorraine Motel. I hear the gunshot of his assassin.
image courtesy Dr. Derek Ham
Now I’m outside of a busted-looking TV shop watching Bobby Kennedy’s speech where he eulogizes MLK and calls for peaceful demonstrations to continue in the light of the clear outrage that was sure to erupt from his slaying. What follows next is truly unexpected…
The experience’s creator Derek Ham told Road to VR the free 15-minute experience is “on track to be available in April,” which will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of MLK. The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis is also slated to feature I AM A MAN at some point in the future. While he’s given the museum exclusive public usage rights for a year, he also hopes to take the I AM A MAN on the road to venues such as schools and libraries.
We’ll be bringing you a greater in-depth look at the making of I AM A MAN this month, so check back soon.
SPHERES, a three-chapter space experience from Darren Aronofsky’s Protozoa Pictures, was just bought by VR finance and distribution firm CityLights in what Variety describes as a “seven-figure deal.”
While the respective companies are remaining mum on the exact price of the acquisition, the Variety report maintains the deal was in “the low- to mid-seven figures.”
Written and directed by Eliza McNitt, Spheres is an experience that explores sound while taking you to the heart of a black hole. Speaking to Oculus in a recent ‘VR Visionaries’ profile, McNitt called Spheres a story about “the human connection to the cosmos,” and how we relate to the sound of the universe—gravitational waves.
“…as I dove into research and the science behind the project, I learned that the discovery of gravitational waves won the Nobel in physics, so that was a huge part of the development of this project. I wanted to capture the most cutting-edge scientific discovery, and, in fact, that was this idea of sound. The title is inspired by the ancient philosophical theory called the Music of the Spheres, that predicted that celestial bodies created a form of music—and we truly did prove that with the discovery of gravitational waves.
Spheres is also packed with talent, with narration by Jessica Chastain (The Martian, Interstellar, The Zookeeper’s Wife) and music by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein of electronica band Survive (The Stranger Things theme song).
“We’re incredibly excited to work with Eliza and the entire team on Spheres,” CityLights co-founder Joel Newton told Variety. “The ambition and generative nature of the vision for Spheres perfectly fits with our mission to bring content to broader audiences and showcase the types of experiences only VR can deliver.”
Spheres is slated to arrive on Rift in the coming months, with a launch on other VR platforms to follow.
The Sundance Film Festival just kicked off in Park City, Utah, and Oculus announced in a blogpost they’re debuting five experiences at the New Frontier section of Sundance—all of which they helped bring to life.
Sundance’s New Frontier hosts a curated selection of works realized in the mediums of VR, AR, MR and AI. You can check out a full list of every entry into their year’s Sundance New Frontier showcase here.
Written and directed by Edward Robles of Here Be Dragons, Dispatch follows a small-town police dispatcher (Martin Starr, Silicon Valley) as he faces an all-night crime spree. The experience takes you inside the dispatcher’s perspective in this episodic, audio-based miniseries. The first three episodes launched on Rift and Gear VR in November, and the finale will launch on the Oculus Store January 25 following its world premiere at Sundance.
Masters of the Sun
Launching for Gear VR, Masters of the Sun is presented by will.i.am and The Black Eyed Peas. It takes place during the ’80s when ancient and modern forces of evil started destroying black communities. Vocal talent including Rakim, Queen Latifah, KRS-One, Jason Isaacs, Slick Rick, and comics industry legend Stan Lee tell the story of mobilization and reclaiming their city, fighting back against the evils of drugs, crime, and discrimination.
The latest project from Felix & Paul Studios, Space Explorers lets you reach new heights through the power of VR. Created in partnership with NASA, the experience follows their astronauts as they prepare to launch into space. Space Explorers is coming to Oculus in 2018.
SPHERES
The first chapter of SPHERES, called “Songs Of Spacetime,” is debuting at Sundance. SPHERES is a three-part series that transports viewers into the deepest pockets of the Universe, bringing to life future worlds and exploring oneness with the cosmos. SPHERES is created by Eliza McNitt and will launch on Rift in 2018.
Wolves in the Walls
From the team behind the Emmy Award-winning project Henry comes Wolves in the Walls, a gorgeous, interactive adaptation of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s haunting work brought to life in VR. Wolves in the Walls is coming to Oculus in 2018.
Oculus Story Studio, the company’s internal production studio tasked with creating ridiculously polished cinematic experiences, first announced they’d be winding down production last summer. Now officially defunct, studio alumni are heading off on their own to form a new firm dubbed Fable Studio, which is furthering development on Story Studio’s last remaining project, Wolves in the Walls. Fable is also introducing a new pricing model for its upcoming character-driven VR experiences.
Oculus Story Studio co-founder Edward Saatchi and Pete Billington, director of Wolves in the Walls, join as co-founders of Fable Studio. Fable is launching with the premiere of Chapter 1 of Wolves in the Walls at Sundance New Frontiers on January, 19th. The project, a VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book The Wolves in the Walls, will span three chapters.
image courtesy Oculus
Shortly after Oculus Story Studio ended production on the Emmy Award-winning Henry in early 2015, the team wanted to dig further into one of the most important problems in VR—creating an experience with an interactive character that’s both natural and meaningful. The goal is essentially feeling like you’re really inhabiting a space with a thinking, feeling person. Fable says Wolves in the Walls protagonist Lucy displays natural behaviors, as she can “remember and callback to actions you’ve taken in a story, be handed and hand you objects, be interrupted credibly and have a hierarchy of emotions toward different objects.”
“Where we’re going is not VR movies anymore. It’s characters who live with us and who we believe in,” said studio co-founder Edward Saatchi, pointing towards the future of character-building.
Fable says all of its future projects will be paid experiences, something they hope will “kickstart a new phase in VR movies of charging for content and seeking to break even.” The studio will charge $1 for every 10 minutes of content, meaning a 20 minute experience would cost $2. Considering how arbitrary pricing seems to most people right now, setting a standard pricing model could give smaller studios incentive to start creating VR narratives.
After Wolves in the Walls, Fable has announced four upcoming projects that will all explore “different elements of VR,” all of which are hand-made in VR using Oculus Quilland other Made in VR tools.
Fable Studio’s Upcoming Projects
Origin
A group of artists work together to solve a virtual reality scavenger hunt to recover stolen art.
concept art, Image courtesy Fable Studio
10
10 is an illustrative realtime documentary using Quill to explore a real life story.
Image courtesy Fable Studio
Derailed
A social virtual amusement park ride with the theme of sleep anxiety.
Image courtesy Fable Studio
Magic River Yacht Club
The viewer follows a giant salmon and its crew up river as they compete in a 500 mile regatta.
Wolves in the Walls, the terrifying children’s book from Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, is getting its own VR experience. Created as one of the last projects of the now-defunct Oculus Story Studio, Wolves in the Walls VR is making its debut at Sundance Film Festival this year.
Oculus Story Studios created three VR experiences before Facebook shuttered the studio back in May; Dear Angelica, Lost, and Henry. The studio’s highly-polished experiences were created to showcase the promise of gripping VR narratives, and while the mission was more or less completed, Wolf in the Walls VR was left unfinished.
According to a report by Variety, most of the Story Studio team couldn’t accept that Gaiman’s VR adaptation was left unfinished. Despite officially disbanding, a majority of the team stayed together to quietly work on the project, which fortuitously received additional funding from Oculus as well.
image courtesy Oculus
Wolves in the Walls follows the ever-imaginative Lucy as she hears wolves crawling in the walls of her family’s home. Stepping into the shoes of Lucy’s imaginary friend, executive producer Saschka Unseld says the experience aims to solve the puzzle of “how to organically combine a compelling and emotional story with interactive worlds and characters.”
New York-based immersive theater company Third Rail Projects developed the story’s choreography, and was directed by DreamWorks Animation veteran Pete Billington and Jessica Shamash, known for her work at Pixar.
The first chapter of Wolves in the Walls VR is set to premiere at Sundance in January, with two additional chapters currently in the works, although release date is uncertain at this time.
The turkey is in the oven, the cranberry sauce is in the can, and your VR setup is in the box ready to be shown off to the family at Thanksgiving. Since you’ll be doing a fair bit of VR evangelizing on the big day, an important question remains before you can plug your unwitting relatives into ‘the final computing platform’: what do you show off first?
Assuming you aren’t actually hosting Thanksgiving, undoubtedly the easiest VR systems to lug around would be the selection of mobile VR headsets currently on offer, namely Google Daydream and Gear VR. With a little careful planning though, you can pack up your PS4 console and PSVR, or your entire Vive/Rift/Windows VR system—just make sure the house has adequate space (and electrical outlets!) for room-scale gaming. Unless otherwise requested, you should probably also keep sessions short and simple for VR newcomers.
Here’s a few recommendations for getting Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Ted, Aunt Rachel and your little cousin Skippy McDingus into VR for the first time:
Gear VR
1 of 4
Smash Hit
Minecraft
Oculus Video
Within
Smash Hit (2016): With its constant forward motion and a simple objective (smash the glass), almost anyone can understand Smash Hit. The game’s futuristic setting and great soundtrack also help give off the “woah, I’m in the future” vibe.
Minecraft (2017): Little Skippy will do and learn anything to play Minecraft in VR. Set up a station in the corner, put on a 10-minute timer and get all the Little Skippies taking turns.
Oculus Video: Load up a movie and toss your Uncle Ted in for his own private cinema. Yes, Ted. You can watch *other things* too.
Within: Let’s face it – most 360 video is crap. Within however offers a wide selection of curated content that looks pretty darn good considering both mono and stereoscopic (3D) 360 video still isn’t where it needs to be technically speaking. Still very much worth a gander.
Daydream
1 of 4
Mekorama VR
Bait!
LEGO BrickHeadz Builder VR
Fantastic Beasts
Mekorama VR (2017): A quiet puzzler for Aunt Gracie, Mekorama VR tasks you with guiding a wibbly little robot pal through a series of 3D puzzles – of course with ever-increasing difficulty.
Bait! (2017): Somebody in your family loves fishing. I’m not even going to make up a pretend name. (also on Gear VR)
LEGO BrickHeadz Builder VR (2017): Ok.So it’s not Minecraft, the delightful little building app comes in second place with the ability to build LEGO structures without the need for clean up.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2017): While pretty thin in the gameplay department, the overall “wow” effect is big with this little Harry Potter Universe game that lets you explore the film’s world and even do a little magic too.
PSVR
1 of 4
Farpoint
Allumette
Fruit Ninja VR
The original PlayStation VR Demo Disc | Photo by Road to VR
Farpoint (2017): While it’s an intense trip for sure thanks to the immersiveness of holding the PS Aim controller while actually having to locomote across the map, there’s somebody in the group who’ll appreciate the ability to walk distant planets and shoot the ever-living shit out of the native inhabitants.
Allumette (2016): Sit grandma down for a story about a young orphan girl who lives in a fantastical city in the clouds. It’s a tear jerker, so make sure to give gam-gam a big hug from us all.
Fruit Ninja VR (2016): Just like the popular mobile game, Fruit Ninja on PSVR is easy to understand. Fruit goes up. Fruit gets sliced. Have a competition to see who can get the highest score!
PlayStation VR Demo Disc 2 (2017): PSVR’s updated demo disc is jam-packed with upcoming games and crowd favorites. Most are short enough to plug in a person for a quick 10-20 minute play session. Oh, and definitely play Moss.
Rift & Vive (and Windows VR)
1 of 4
Google Earth VR
Space Pirate Trainer
Bigscreen Beta
Coco VR
Google Earth VR (2017) – Oculusand SteamVR: The controls may take some explaining, but giving a loved one the opportunity to travel, especially if they aren’t physically able, is going to really be a special moment. Travel the sights and revisit distant places you never thought you’d see again in the flesh.
Space Pirate Trainer (2016) Oculusand SteamVR: Han Solo doesn’t have anything on your Auntie Rachel. While it’s fundamentally just a wave shooter, it’s by far one of the best-looking and feeling out there.
Bigscreen Beta (2016) Oculus and SteamVR: Pop on a video and get your relatives reeling at the future possibility of never having to buy a TV ever again.
Coco VR (2017) – Oculus:Pixar’s first VR experience is absolutely astounding. Ideal for the first timer of any age, the experience can last anywhere from 15-30 minutes per player. check out our hands-on here. Vive and Windows VR headset users have had varying levels of success with Revive, so it’s definitely worth a poke.
The Lab (2016)SteamVR: Valve’s collection of mini-games and photogrammetry scenes are top notch, and warrant more than just a few minutes of you time to explore ever single bit of what’s on offer. Kids and adults a like will love the Longbow, Core Calibration, and Xortex.
