Post by auntym on Oct 21, 2016 13:41:38 GMT -6
www.laweekly.com/arts/from-hollywood-to-silicon-beach-la-creatives-are-plotting-virtual-realitys-boom-7513609
From Hollywood to Silicon Beach, L.A. Creatives are Plotting Virtual Reality's Boom
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
By Liz Ohanesian / www.laweekly.com/authors/liz-ohanesian-2127134
Photo by Danny Liao
In a meagerly outfitted room in a Venice Beach home that once belonged to Dennis Hopper, a gnome is hiding from me.
He’s skittish, but I can sense him scurrying through the forest behind me. Every time I turn my head to find him, he’s gone. Even when I open the doors on the side of a tree to peek inside his little, sylvan home, he’s not there. When he finally appears again, we make eye contact. He wants the food that I’ve foraged. I crouch to the ground and extend my arm to hand him an acorn. He scurries away again.
I remove the headset — an HTC Vive — and it’s just a plain white room again. Outside, in the real world, a party’s happening. It’s a late August evening, and a DJ is playing under the twilight sky as guests snack on treats from Kogi in the backyard of the house, which now serves as the headquarters of virtual-reality content-creation company Wevr (formerly Wemo). They’re celebrating the launch of their latest project, Gnomes & Goblins, an immersive fantasy created by Jon Favreau, director of The Jungle Book and the Iron Man franchise and, all those years ago, the writer and star of Swingers.
Despite all the style and swagger of the partygoers, the near-empty room is the real attraction. Pull down the Vive headset, clutch its controllers, and users are transported to a lush, whimsical forest. That’s where they’ll try to feed the gnome, whose apprehension changes with each experience. On this particular evening, it takes a few minutes to lure him with food. After he finally grabs the gift, he reciprocates the kindness with a bell. Ring it, and the users become as small as he is. They can hang out inside the gnome’s treehouse. They can teeter at the edge of a rickety-looking bridge, wondering if it’s stable enough to hold their weight. There’s no harm in it — the worst consequence is bumping into a wall. Still, this world feels so real that the mind reacts with safety at the forefront, much as it would in an actual forest filled with its pursuant hazards. That’s what VR pros call “presence,” the result of a fully immersive experience like this.
“I want to create that experience, where you feel that level of comfort and that level of agency,” Favreau says, “but also that there are other things to explore and discover, almost like a Disneyland-type feel.”
CONTINUE READING: www.laweekly.com/arts/from-hollywood-to-silicon-beach-la-creatives-are-plotting-virtual-realitys-boom-7513609
From Hollywood to Silicon Beach, L.A. Creatives are Plotting Virtual Reality's Boom
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
By Liz Ohanesian / www.laweekly.com/authors/liz-ohanesian-2127134
Photo by Danny Liao
In a meagerly outfitted room in a Venice Beach home that once belonged to Dennis Hopper, a gnome is hiding from me.
He’s skittish, but I can sense him scurrying through the forest behind me. Every time I turn my head to find him, he’s gone. Even when I open the doors on the side of a tree to peek inside his little, sylvan home, he’s not there. When he finally appears again, we make eye contact. He wants the food that I’ve foraged. I crouch to the ground and extend my arm to hand him an acorn. He scurries away again.
I remove the headset — an HTC Vive — and it’s just a plain white room again. Outside, in the real world, a party’s happening. It’s a late August evening, and a DJ is playing under the twilight sky as guests snack on treats from Kogi in the backyard of the house, which now serves as the headquarters of virtual-reality content-creation company Wevr (formerly Wemo). They’re celebrating the launch of their latest project, Gnomes & Goblins, an immersive fantasy created by Jon Favreau, director of The Jungle Book and the Iron Man franchise and, all those years ago, the writer and star of Swingers.
Despite all the style and swagger of the partygoers, the near-empty room is the real attraction. Pull down the Vive headset, clutch its controllers, and users are transported to a lush, whimsical forest. That’s where they’ll try to feed the gnome, whose apprehension changes with each experience. On this particular evening, it takes a few minutes to lure him with food. After he finally grabs the gift, he reciprocates the kindness with a bell. Ring it, and the users become as small as he is. They can hang out inside the gnome’s treehouse. They can teeter at the edge of a rickety-looking bridge, wondering if it’s stable enough to hold their weight. There’s no harm in it — the worst consequence is bumping into a wall. Still, this world feels so real that the mind reacts with safety at the forefront, much as it would in an actual forest filled with its pursuant hazards. That’s what VR pros call “presence,” the result of a fully immersive experience like this.
“I want to create that experience, where you feel that level of comfort and that level of agency,” Favreau says, “but also that there are other things to explore and discover, almost like a Disneyland-type feel.”
CONTINUE READING: www.laweekly.com/arts/from-hollywood-to-silicon-beach-la-creatives-are-plotting-virtual-realitys-boom-7513609