youtube 360 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

August 26, 2018

New Escape The Abbey VR Experience Released For Upcoming Horror Film, The Nun

The upcoming horror film The Nun has released a new virtual reality (VR) 360-degree video as part of its marketing campaign to prepare viewers for the films release. The release will allow viewers the chance to actually step into the world of the film and experience the horror that awaits them from an immersive view point.

The Nun Escape The Abbey

The release of the 360-degree video comes following one of the film’s video adverts was removed from YouTube for being “too scary and violating the site’s policies”, reports fanfast. The new release is entitled Escape The Abbey and will put viewers right in the middle of the action. With the freedom to look around you in a full 360-degree field of view, the viewer will be following The Nun as she leads them deeper into the abbey and the darkness that awaits below.

Available to watch on your computer screen or a mobile device, the truly immersive way to experience the video will be to wear a VR headset. If you are able to keep your wits about you throughout the three and a half minute video, then perhaps you will be able to handle the full film when it releases September 7th, 2018.

The Nun Escape The Abbey

The Nun is being directed by Corin Hardy and is co-writting by The Conjuring’s James Wan and Gary Dauberman. Featuring Oscar-nominated Demian Bichir as Father Burke, Taissa Farmiga as Sister Irene, Jonas Bloquet as local villager Frenchie, Charlotte Hope Sister Victoria, Ingrid Bisu as Sister Oana, and Bonnie Aarons as The Nun, reprising her role from The Conjuring 2. The film’s synopsis describes the film as:

“When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, and a priest (Damian Bichir) with a haunted past and a novitiate (Taissa Farmiga) on the threshold of her final vows are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.”

The Escape The Abbey experience is available to watch now from the videos website. VRFocus will be sure to bring you all the latest on all things VR in the future so make sure to keep reading to stay up to date.

December 14, 2017

Baobabs’ Asteroids Crash into VR Today

Baobab Studios has today debuted the highly anticipated virtual reality (VR) animated film, Asteroids!, available for Google Daydream, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard and Windows MR head-mounted displays (HMDs). Featuring Ingrid Nilsen as the voice of Peas, Asteroids! marks Nilsen’s first foray into VR work alongside Elizabeth Banks.

The follow-up to Baobab Studios’ well received Invasion!, Asteroids! follows the journey of Mac, Cheez (Elizabeth Banks) and their sidekick Peas (Ingrid Nilsen) as they traverse the challenges of space. Cheez is a loyal robot pet with a playful streak who is always ready for a game of fetch or daring rescue mission, while Peas is the loveable goofball with a heart of gold who just wants her best friends to be happy.

From the director of Madagascar, Asteroids! is an 11-minute interactive cinematic experience in which viewers are taken by Mac, Cheez and Peas on a deep space mission where they come face-to-face with teeth-gnashing space-bugs and careening asteroids.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like Asteroids!,” said YouTube and lifestyle personality Ingrid Nilsen. “Asteroids! is completely social and interactive. From the second the film starts, you are immediately immersed in a world where virtual animated characters become your friends and together, you experience emotions like humour, excitement and compassion, just as you would in real life.”

Asteroids! is now available for free via YouTube 360, Facebook 360, Baobab VR app for iOS and Android, Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, and Windows MR HMDs. The film can also be directly downloaded for Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream, and both iOS and Android editions of Google Cardboard.

Baobab Studios’ executive team is led by Maureen Fan, Eric Darnell and Larry Cutler, combining experiences from cinema, animation and gaming as leaders formerly of Pixar, Zynga and DreamWorks Animation. In 2015 Baobab Studios announced a first funding round of $6,000,000 USD, lead by Comcast Ventures. This was followed by a second round of $25,000,000 from the likes of 20th Century Fox, HTC Corp., Youku Global Media Fund and Horizons Ventures. There’ll be plenty more to come from Baobab Studios in the future, and VRFocus will keep you updated with all the latest details.

December 14, 2017

VR Short Film ‘Asteroids!’ from Baobab Studios Now Available

Interactive VR short film Asteroids!, the follow-up to Emmy award-winning VR short Invasion! (2016) is now available for Gear VR, Daydream, and Windows MR headsets. From the director of the Madagascar franchise, the full 11-minute cut continues the journey of aliens Mac and Cheez (and robot sidekick Peas) on their deep space mission.

Baobab Studios announced Asteroids! at Oculus Connect 3 in 2016, and has since made an interactive preview of the animation available on Gear VR and Daydream platforms. A 360 video ‘sneak peek’ has also been available in various forms, including the iOS and Android Baobab app.

Today, the full version of Asteroids! is available for free across several platforms. The best experience can be found on Gear VR, Daydream, and Windows Mixed Reality devices, where the animation is rendered in real-time 3D. Sadly, unlike their first short, Asteroids! is not currently available on PSVR, HTC Vive, or Oculus Rift, despite its considerably more interactive design.

Invasion! was the team’s first foray into VR animation, and was a polished experience, but ended all too quickly. It was later slightly extended with an intro narrated by Ethan Hawke, but this felt like an afterthought, and didn’t offer the viewer what was really needed—more time with the characters. Asteroids! is a major improvement, being longer, with more complex animation and now interactivity.

“Different storytelling mediums all have a common goal—to tell great stories through characters that audiences connect with, care about, and maybe even come to love,” Baobab writes on their official site. “The great challenge and great potential for VR storytelling is not simply to achieve this goal, but also, to do it in a way that actually lets the viewer become a part of the story. With Asteroids!, this is a step towards achieving this goal.”

Follow these links to download the Gear VR, Daydream, and Windows Mixed Reality real-time versions. The non-interactive 360 video version of the full short can be viewed via YouTube 360 and Facebook 360, or via the Baobab app for iOS and Android (which also supports the Cardboard VR viewer), but for the reasons above, it is strongly recommended to experience one of the real-time versions first.

Baobab Studios is one of the largest independent VR film studios, having raised a total of $31 million in funding to date, most notably a $25 million Series B funding round in 2016 which also welcomed Larry Cutler (ex Dreamworks and Pixar) as CTO. Their current project, Rainbow Crow, an adaptation of a Lenape Native American tale, is their most ambitious, presented in several chapters, and features musician John Legend.

The post VR Short Film ‘Asteroids!’ from Baobab Studios Now Available appeared first on Road to VR.

August 7, 2017

Annabelle Wants to Play In New VR Short Film

Annabelle, a horror film about a possessed doll and the terror it causes was originally released in 2014. A prequel movie, Annabelle: Creation is due out in cinemas on 11^th August, 2017. To tie in to the film, a virtual reality (VR) interactive film has been released titled Annabelle: Creation VR – Bee’s Room.

Annabelle: Creation VR – Bee’s Room is available on Samsung Gear VR as well as via YouTube 360 and Facebook 360. The short film puts the user in the role of someone trapped in the room of a young child, forced to play a twisted game of hide and seek with the possessed and malicious doll, Annabelle.

The short VR experience was created by Pasadena-based VR content creators SunnyBoy Entertainment and aims to provide a taste of the panic the protagonists of the film will feel as Annabelle hunts them down.

The Annabelle: Creation movie tells the story of a dollmaker named Samuel Mullins and his wife, who open their homes to some a nun named Sister Charlotte and some children made homeless by the closure of the local orphanage. However, the apparently pleasant house holds a dark secret, involving the Mullins daughter who died years ago, and whose angry spirit may yet live on in the form of the doll, Annabelle.

Further information can be found on the official Annabelle: Creation website, where the VR short can also be found.

VRFocus will bring you further information on Annabelle: Creation VR – Bee’s Room and other new VR experiences as it becomes available.

June 22, 2017

YouTube Now Offering Heatmaps for 360 Video Analytics

Spherical YouTube videos with over 1,000 views now include ‘360° Heatmaps’ within the Analytics section of the Creator Studio. The new feature provides a visual representation of low to high attention areas of the video, helping to inform content creators of what aspects of a 360-degree scene are engaging viewers the most.

YouTube has supported the viewing of spherical videos in VR since 2015, adding features such as stereoscopic 3D, live streaming, and spatial audio along the way. Google’s Daydream VR platform sparked a further push for 360-degree video, encouraging YouTubers to create content with their Jump program, and they’ve also attempted to help creators acclimatise to the unique challenges of recording in this format, offering some tips and best practices.

Further assistance is found in the Creator Studio, with 360° Heatmaps adding to the wide range of existing analytics tools available to all YouTube content creators. According to YouTube’s Creator Blog, “you’ll be able to see exactly what parts of your video are catching a viewer’s attention and how long they’re looking at a specific part of the video”.

As the feature applies to any 360-degree video, heatmap data is generated from all views, regardless of what device is being used. This means that some data will come from the orientation tracking in VR headsets, but a significant percentage will represent users without headsets, viewing a 360-degree video on their mobile device, either physically turning around or swiping the screen, or even using a regular browser, panning the view around with a pointer. As people are likely to engage with content in a slightly different way with their head compared to flicking around a screen, the heatmaps can be sorted by device.

National Geographic Funds VR Film to Save the Elephants

The elephant population of Garamba National Park, in the Democratic Republic of Congo is under constant threat from heavily armed and well-organised groups of poachers. The film department of National Geographic are hoping to raise awareness and funding to end their plight with the launch of a new virtual reality (VR) short film.

The Protectors: Walk in the Rangers Shoes will be premièring at the Tribeca Film Festival on 21^st April. The short film was shot exclusively in VR and was directed by Academy Awards winner Kathryn Bigelow. The film follows the lives of the Garamba park rangers as they try and protect the elephants from ivory poachers.

“National Geographic has been protecting the planet for 129 years and inspiring others to do the same through text, photos, videos and, increasingly, VR,” said Rachel Webber, executive vice president of digital product for National Geographic. “The Protectors transports audiences to the heart of the ivory conflict, witnessing the battle between destruction and preservation firsthand.”

“The world’s park rangers are truly unsung heroes, serving as the last line of defense between endangered wildlife and extinction — for lions, rhinos, pangolins, etc., and, of course, elephants,” said director Kathryn Bigelow. “With the help of National Geographic and African Parks, The Protectors offers an opportunity to get to know the brave Rangers of Garamba National Park in the DRC, where poaching elephants for their ivory tusks is rampant. Their job is a deadly race against time, fraught with danger, and without them the elephants’ extinction is all but certain. Every day they put their lives at risk to protect our planet’s wildlife — but they cannot do it alone. Both the elephants and rangers need your help.”

Following the première of the film at Tribeca, The Protectors will then be made available on the Within VR content platform from 1^st May and then on Facebook and YouTube from 8^th May.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news of upcoming VR film projects.