Stuxnet Documentary ‘Zero Days VR’ Wins an Emmy

The winner of the 39th annual Emmy Awards are in, and while nominated VR projects were few and far between this year, Zero Days VR nabbed the award for the category ‘Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary’.

Produced by Scatter, a New York-based studio that creates immersive stories and AR/VR creativity tools, the film delves into the rapidly changing world of cyber warfare and its impacts on international politics. Zero Days VR was based on the titular Oscar short-listed Participant Media documentary, and visualizes the story of Stuxnet in a way the traditional documentary simply couldn’t—by placing you inside a virtual world of computer viruses, which the studio says lets you experience “the high stakes of cyber warfare at a human scale.”

Here’s Scatter’s description of Zero Days VR:

Early in the Obama administration, the United States created plans for a crippling cyber attack against Iran in the event that diplomatic efforts to constrain the Iranian nuclear program were unsuccessful. The plan, code named “Nitro Zeus” was designed to disable communication infrastructure, essential parts of the power grid, and disable air defenses. This massive yet secret effort represents the emergence of a chilling new military frontier, cyber warfare. In Alex Gibney’s new film Zero Days he investigates the impacts that cyber warfare are already having on international infrastructure and the inevitable collateral damage.

Zero Days VR was released to the public in June 2017, available both on the Oculus Store (Rift) and Steam (Rift, HTC Vive) for $5. Check out the trailer below for a quick look at Zero Days VR.

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VR Documentary Zero Days Wins an Emmy

As virtual reality (VR) becomes more popular and recognised, a number of prestigious awards are beginning to include VR as part of its nominations, sometimes even creating entirely new categories to recognise the achievement of immersive media.

In 2017 a VR experience was created and released by creative studio Scatter in collaboration with Oculus Studios. Based on the larger Zero Days documentary, Zero Days VR told the story of the Stuxnet malware. Now it has been revealed that the title has won an Emmy Award.

Zero Days VR looks at the world of cyber security through the lens of Stuxnet, a type of malware generally recognised as the first cyber weapon to do damage in the real world.

Viewers can experience how the Stuxnet virus was originally created as part of a secret mission developed by the governments of the USA and Israel in order to sabotage an Iranian nuclear facility. The audience can see the invisible worlds inside a computer in a new way in order to get a better understanding of how these ‘cyber weapons’ work.

The VR documentary has now won the Emmy Award for Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary at the 39th News & Documentary Emmy Awards, beating out other nominees such as Finding Home from Time and We Are Witnesses from The Marshall Project.

The co-founder of Scatter, Yasmin Elayat announced the win on Twitter. The Twitter post also included the full acceptance speech for the award, along with a following tweet acknowledging the work of the various people who had contributed towards the project.

Zero Days VR is available on the Oculus Store for the Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift and Oculus Go and a version is also available on the HTC Vive, priced at $4.99 (USD).

For future coverage of award-winning VR titles, keep checking back with VRFocus.

VR Documentary Zero Days Scores News And Doc Emmy

VR Documentary Zero Days Scores News And Doc Emmy

One of VR’s most striking documentaries just won itself an Emmy.

Zero Days VR, the 2017 experience that itself was based upon the larger Zero Days documentary, just won the award for Outstanding New Approaches: Documentary at last night’s 39th News & Documentary Emmy Awards. The experience beat out other entries like Time’s Finding Home piece and We Are Witnesses from The Marshall Project.

Developed by Scatter with the help of Oculus Studios, Zero Days VR shines a virtual spotlight on the issue of cyber warfare, recounting the story of the Stuxnet virus in a visually innovative way. As we hear from experts we see the virus do its work in the invisible ‘cyber realm’, creating a striking visual style. The 360-degree trailer above gives you an idea of what to expect.

VR is no stranger to the Emmys. Over the past few years experiences like Henry have walked away with awards throughout the institution’s various ceremonies.

Zero Days is available on Rift, Vive, Gear and Go for $4.99.

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Something for the Weekend: Oculus Rift & Gear VR Discounts

For those who find themselves looking for something new to play over the next week on their Oculus Rift or Samsung Gear VR, VRFocus has just the thing. Take a look below at the Oculus Store’s library of virtual reality (VR) titles to find what discounts are currently available.

Zero Days VR screenshot

Zero Days VR

Compatibility: Oculus Rift

Based on the Oscar short-listed Participant Media documentary Zero Days, Scatter’s award-winning, immersive documentary Zero Days VR visualizes the story of Stuxnet in a new way: placing you inside the invisible world of computer viruses, experiencing the high stakes of cyber warfare at a human scale. It’s currently on sale this weekend costing £3.99 GBP rather than £7.99 through Oculus Store.

PLANNES screenshot

PLANNES

Compatibility: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive

PLANNES is a zero-gravity game of tennis featuring both single-player and multiplayer modes. The title is currently discounted on Oculus Store, dropping the price fro £10.99 to £5.99. There’s no discount for its Steam listing.

Raw Data

Compatibility: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive

One of the biggest and best known wave shooters around, Raw Data has now left early access and to celebrated its release developer Survios has knocked a nice healthy 25 percent of the price. So instead of spending £29.99, now its just £22.49.

Chernobyl VR Project 1

Chernobyl VR Project

Compatibility: Oculus Rift

Ever wanted to visit the site of the worlds worst nuclear meltdown, just didn’t fancy a dose of radiation. Well those lovely folks at The Farm 51 have done the hard work, creating Chernobyl VR Project. Normally £7.99 on Oculus Store, at present it’s £3.99. The HTC Vive version on Steam isn’t on sale.

Rush screenshot

Rush

Compatibility: Gear VR

Take a dive into the adrenaline-pumping world of wingsuit flying with Rush. Weave through canyons, dodge outcrops, and plummeting down sheer drops as you race towards the finish line. Currently on sale for £2.99 rather than £5.99.

Omega Agent 1

Omega Agent

Compatibility: Gear VR

Become a super-spy on the Omega Island training facility, featuring your very own nuclear-powered jetpack. Currently on sale for £1.11 rather than £2.29.

Pinball FX2 VR Gear VR Screenshot - 5

Pinball FX2 VR

Compatibility: Gear VR

Become a mobile pinball wizard as Pinball FX2 VR comes supplied with three tables Mars, Epic Quest, and Secrets of the Deep. Then if players want more content in-app purchases are available, with Paranormal, CastleStorm, Earth Defense, Wild West Rampage, Biolab and The Walking Dead tables on sale individually. Currently on sale for £1.99 rather than £3.99.

Monzo VR-CoverArt

Monzo VR

Compatibility: Gear VR

Featuring over 30 model making kits Monzo VR covers a wealth of designs, from dinosaurs and ships to cars, helicopters and more. Just like normal model making kits users are given instructions on how to build each one, after which they can then add their own artistic flair with a range of colour options and decals to choose from. Currently on sale for £2.79 rather than £4.99.

Daedalus

Compatibility: Gear VR

Daedalus is a platformer and an exploration game set in a spectacular oneiric and surrealist world. Currently on sale for £1.99 rather than £3.99.

Disc League screenshot

Disc League

Compatibility: Gear VR

A fast paced, physics based, game of throwing glowing discs featuring single-player and multiplayer modes. Currently on sale for £1.99 rather than £3.99.

Visualizing An Invisible Cyber War with ‘Zero Days VR’

yasmin-elayat There’s an invisible cyber war that’s happening between major nation states, and Zero Days VR takes you inside of it in a completely new way using virtual reality. You go on a journey into a hyper-stylized cyberspace world where you embody the Stuxnet computer virus as it navigates programmable logic controllers, changes code, and destroys Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

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Zero Days VR is one of the most powerful VR documentaries that I’ve seen so far since it uses the unique affordances of VR to visualize what’s at stake for weaponizing security vulnerabilities, and it uses these volumetric affordances to innovate what’s possible in immersive storytelling. The end result is a visceral and embodied experience of an otherwise complex and abstract topic of cyber warfare that is probably one of the most important stories in our world today.

Zero Days VR is based upon the journalistic work of Alex Gibney’s Zero Days documentary, but it’s not a promotional experience for the movie but rather a self-contained experience that uses VR to tell aspects of the story that didn’t work as well in the 2D version. The VR experience tells the story as if the main character is code, and they created different immersive environments that reflected testimony from a range of computer experts as well as a number of official government denials.

At Sundance, I had a chance to talk with Scatter’s Creative Director Yasmin Elayat about directing Zero Days VR, and how this project came about through the use of their Depthkit technology in Gibney’s documentary. We also talked about their failed experiments to make this into a non-linear and interactive experience. It turned out that too much journalistic integrity and overall context was lost when they surrendered control over the linear release of evidence, and so they had to abandon the more interactive components of the experience that they were building off from their previous experience on interactive VR doc CLOUDS created by James George and Jonathan Minard.

Zero Days VR was released on June 8th on Oculus Home for both the Oculus Rift and Gear VR, and it also won an award for Narrative Achievement at Unity’s Vision VR/AR Awards.

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