37 ROUND TABLE VR
THIS MONTH’S FEED ROUND TABLE GUESTS ARE:
FEED: ASK FIVE PEOPLEWHAT VIRTUAL REALITY IS AND YOU’LL GET FIVE DIFFERENT ANSWERS. HOWDO YOUDEFINE ‘VR’?
MARIA KOROLOV: An immersive medium for photos, games, simulations and social environments. MUKI KULHAN: How’s this for a potential sixth answer: The definition of VR is, that the reality of your environment is in a virtual space. No matter what you experience or how you experience it, and regardless of whether your environment is animated or images, still or moving. It’s only virtually real because inside this environment, you are not physically there taking part. And this feeling of ‘virtualness’ is what makes this format so special, it takes you somewhere that’s dierent from real life and unique. A proper escape.
TANYA LAIRD: VR is the creation of an artificial environment which reframes a user’s perception of reality. FABRICE LORENCEAU: Virtual reality is a combination of technologies allowing you to immerse your senses in virtual worlds and experience spaces connected to and beyond our physical one. LUCAS WILSON: My definition of VR is an “immersive experience - with interactivity”. 360º video is a type of immersive experience that can be very cool, but in my mind it’s not VR, because it’s not interactive. But if you add a branched narrative, for instance, then it does become interactive and is VR. Interactivity is the key.
MARIAKOROLOVWIVR Maria Korolov has been covering emerging technology and emerging markets for 20 years. She is also founder and president of Women in Virtual Reality, an organisation dedicated to increasing the visibility of women in the VR field.
MUKIKULHANMUKI INTERNATIONAL Muki Kulhan is an executive digital producer who has been instrumental in bringing VR and immersive experience to major media and entertainment brands, including BBC, ITV, MTV, Jamiroquai and the Jamie Oliver Foundation.
FEED: WHAT ARE THEMOST COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT VR?
TANYALAIRDDIGITALJAM Tanya Laird is CEO and founder of digital entertainment consultancy Digital Jam. The company’s Digital Jam Sessions are a series of podcast round tables which bring together disparate arms of the creative and tech industries to brainstorm, problem-solve and vision the future.
MARIA KOROLOV: That it’s like The Matrix . It’s not. Yet. Or that it’s like 3D TV. You can get a 3D feel in VR, but the immersive quality is what sets it apart. You feel like you are actually somewhere else. MUKI KULHAN: Misconceptions normally hover around the ‘VRirgins’ or first timers, where there seems to be a fear of the unknown, that something will eat you or rip out your eyeballs if you put on a headset. Luckily, to ease their anxieties, they can always try a web browser and steer the action themselves, and confidence before graduating to a headset. For the doubters, they seem to harvest misconceptions that it’s a gimmick. However I can testify, first hand, that at the rate things are going, it’s a creative format that’ll be around for quite some time and will only improve. TANYA LAIRD: That VR requires an HMD (head-mounted display). This stems largely from the emergence of Oculus Rift, which for many people was their first experience with VR and therefore set a mainstream bar of perception.
FABRICE LORENCEAU: One misconception is that VR and AR are somehow very dierent or competing. VR is essentially about creating virtual worlds to immerse the user, whereas AR is juxtaposing the real world with virtual elements. MR is anything in-between. In the end, you are either partially or completely surrounded by a virtual world that utilises the same technology that tracks various degrees of the real world. Another misconception around VR and AR is that people believe it will be an overnight success. Phones took time and had many iterations ranging from mobile phones to PDAs to smartphones before it became the widely adopted technology we know and depend upon today. Within the same category, VR and AR will also need several iterations before they become products that everyone uses daily. LUCAS WILSON: That it’s very expensive to produce, and that you have to have an Oculus Rift or other expensive hardware in order to experience it. VR devices certainly can be expensive, but that’s not the default. Good VR is available on the average iOS or Android mobile device!
FABRICELORENCEAULIVELIKE Fabrice Lorenceau is co-founder and head of productions of LiveLike, a pioneering virtual reality and mixed reality studio which has produced live immersive content for major sports events, including the French Open, NFL Super Bowl, UEFA Champions League and FIFA World Cup.
LUCASWILSONSUPERSPHERE Lucas Wilson is founder and executive producer of VR creative services company Supersphere. Wilson has a long history in the development of next- gen capture and display and was on the team of James Cameron’s 3D start-up Cameron-Pace Group.
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