At the St. Sundance Film Festival in Monday, Facebook's subsidiary, OCULUSVR, which specializes in virtual reality technology, announced that it would set up a studio dedicated to virtual reality movies, and that cinemas would become a new arena for virtual reality technology.
Oculus VR has a studio named "Story Studio" (Story Studio) that will assume its virtual reality and Hollywood-related business. The studio's tasks include writing scripts and stories for virtual reality movies, and also enlightening Hollywood studios to encourage them to take virtual reality movies.
According to reports, the studio from the world-renowned animation company Pixar dug some talent, of which Pixa company's "veteran" Saschka Unseld, will serve as creative director of the studio.
Last year, Facebook paid 2 billion of dollars to buy OCULUSVR, a social network that suddenly entered a completely unfamiliar realm of virtual reality, sparking heightened concern. Since then, Zuckerberg has expressed high hopes for virtual reality technology, that it can become the next generation of human computing platform, virtual reality can be in education, health care, training and other industries to play an important role.
In addition to developing virtual reality helmets, Oculus VR has begun to build computing platforms for virtual reality, including design interfaces, technical standards, hardware manufacturers and other software and content developers for Samsung Electronics.
So far, the biggest use of virtual reality and helmet is still in the field of online gaming, after Zuckerberg led OCULUSVR executives to visit Hollywood studios. According to reports, Zuckerberg wants Hollywood to be able to shoot virtual reality movies, and in the early days, you can shoot some trailers or short films first.
Technology such as virtual reality has begun to push some Hollywood studios into a 360-degree panoramic movie based on helmets, a prelude to a virtual reality movie, Reuters reported.
At the Sundance Film Festival in Utah State, the organizers also devoted one link to the virtual reality film, which will show virtual reality films from producers and companies such as Chrismilk, Felix&paul, which are hoping to attract more independent filmmakers to focus on virtual reality works.
Erib Brendaniribe, CEO of Oculus VR, says the film industry is now starting to take an interest in virtual reality and is taking some concrete action.
He said Oculusvr's hope is to allow viewers to watch virtual reality works in real time in cinemas, and after wearing helmets, viewers can interact directly with the characters and objects in the movie to gain an unprecedented visual experience.
At the Sundance Film Festival, Oculusvr will also play its own virtual reality short film, "Lost", which took six months to make the film. The film is completely interactive, depending on the audience's interactive behavior and options, the length of the movie is not fixed in 4-10 minutes.
The media pointed out that since the virtual reality helmet needed to watch the movie has not yet entered the mass market, virtual reality enters the cinema for some time.
A handful of companies have launched virtual reality helmet products, such as Samsung Electronics Gearvr (with the company's Note4 mobile phone), and Google (Weibo) has also launched a simple version of the cardboard virtual reality helmet, but the industry's most technologically advanced oculusrift helmet, The consumer version has not yet been launched (the developer version is currently available).
Saschkaunseld, creative Director of the story studio, said that in terms of technology and creativity, there are still some hurdles to be taken in shooting virtual reality movies, such as the current computer system in real-time virtual reality movie rendering processing, the speed is slow, and in the virtual reality movie, Viewers can achieve a 360-degree panoramic view, and both writers and filming need to make dramatic changes.
The executive says traditional movies are linear and one-dimensional when it comes to storytelling. But in the virtual reality movie, the audience is in a three-dimensional space environment, so the producer and director, need to push the movie story in three-dimensional way in the whole space.
For OCULUSVR companies, if virtual reality technology can be combined with Hollywood, it will bring a huge demand for oculusrift helmets. It is well known that after the popularity of 3D movies, many cinemas have to buy 3D glasses, the corresponding, the future cinema, also must be equipped with a large number of virtual reality helmet, which will create a massive helmet market.
(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)