1) VR Projects
InCell VR (Game)
For I Saw The Future, Conscious Existence, Fistful of Stars, they are all expressions of magnificent scenes with elaborate details, like a collaboration of fantastic things we won’t be able to experience in real life. Conscious Existence is around 12 minutes, which is the longest VR video I have experienced so far and the visual effect of it is really thrilling. As the introduction goes, “You are gifted every moment with life’s most precious achievement: A conscious mind, enabling you to sense and hold within, the universe’s boundless beauty – a source of infinite inspiration that fuels your inner space.” With the help of a children’s perspective, the author created a journey that goes beyond the emotional level, making the audience transcend into a relaxed and appreciative state of mind. I would recommend this to those who try VR the first time since it perfectly illustrates how the VR world can give you a jolt that the real world can’t.
I Saw The Future is pretty unique, it is not an accumulation of amazing scenes, but more like a future envision focuses on certain things (which is the piece of news and pixel effect in the project). The author of the project used pixels(particles) to deconstruct a video of a person talking about how organic development has already come to an end, and now is the era of inorganic/mechanism evolution. The camera zooms out of a scene where an infinite number of particles vibrate together, which is the person’s moving mouth. Some scenes, like particles floating between two particles-formed human heads that are speaking, are really powerful, but also a little horrible. The project shows a great imagination for future communication. For The Spacewalker, though I wasn’t able to control my pace as the BBC spacewalk VR project should be, the visual effect is still inspirational, where you can feel your own smallness in the vastness of the universe.
I also tried a VR game called InCell VR recommended by Iris. The resolution of the game turns out to be better than most videos. I feel a little dizzy playing the game, and a little uncomfortable because of shaking my head with the heavy headset on, my eyes hurt as well because of the high concentration on the moving objects in the game. But generally, it is much more immersive than just watching videos. I guess that’s probably because I have actions along with audio and visual effects. I watched Jingyue, a Chinese vlogger’s video of himself playing a rock-climbing VR game, and his shaking legs and scared reactions clearly show how immersive and vivid VR games can be.
2) Past Projects
Unfortunately, all the VR videos in the archive are not split into left and right screens, and my headset doesn’t support the format, so I wasn’t able to experience them in VR. I watched them in 2D on my laptop, and I feel they are all great designed experiences with limited technologies and experiences (e.g. we won’t be able to make animation/visual effect in Conscious Existence). Below are my impressions of the videos.
The Intimate Zone: I went to experience Zane Fadul’s VR project during the IMA show last year, and it was really amazing. It creates a VR experience by giving the audience other feelings (sense of touch/pressure, temperature) along with audio/visual manually, which is effective and easy to operate.
On Shanghai: The projects create illusions based on reality, modify the video/pictures taken in reality and show them in VR/ create fake interactions. I would think processing the video first on the computer seems to be an efficient way of making VR projects.
Ode to Joy VR: I experienced this project in person as well during the IMA show. The duplication of people and instruments is amazing, and I think the audio in the project shows that it can be more important than the visual effect.
Routes & Destinations: The design of the projects are really interesting and they echo with my original thinking before taking this class, which is to create a VR NYU Shanghai campus since we are moving to the new campus in 2 years and the “home campus” for class 2013-2018 will not exist anymore in a way.
Synchronized Movements: I didn’t experience the VR version of it so it turns out to be a little confusing, as watching it in 2D I cannot fully understand what it is expressing.
So from previous classes’ projects I think we might create a VR video – it may be interactive may not be – and we will think up ways to make the project more immersive, no matter adding other senses in reality or by modifying the video.
Reference: http://epicscapes.de/conscious-existence-virtual-reality.html