Tips & Tricks for negotiating the Metaverse with..........Pooky Amsterdam
Streaming services, TV and other channels provide immensely watchable content. People spend 4 hours a day watching, on all platforms, like YouTube. Youtube Shorts alone recently surpassed 50 Billion daily views!
I want my entertainment to be bingeable, and fun. Right now most of the streaming screens we look at are flat, but increasingly the awesome and compelling view of VR has my interest. We have lots of examples of concerts done for Virtual Reality as well as sports action, interviews, training, and animation. VR can also profoundly deliver a you are there experience, witness from this years SIGGRAPH, "You Destroy. We Create" an immersive tour into Ukraine's artists consciousness and reality. Here are more examples of the kind of VR entertainment currently available.
First Person Shooter games also abound. To be honest I am scared enough, and don't want to kill zombies in my spare time. Personally I don't want to kill anyone or anything for kicks & giggles. I dont want to even "pretend" hit anyone, and I'm not bothered about making baskets, goals, holes or home runs. When I turn on any device for an evening of good programming, I am looking for engagement with characters, storyline and inspiration.
The closer and clearer Volumetric Video becomes to me, the more I see it as the Next Big Thing. Where entertainment is more than a watching experience anymore, but at a whole new level of being there, inside the program.
Q: Can VR in The Metaverse enable immersive entertainment?
I wrote a blog about 13 years ago where someone who wanted to relax and have fun after a long day, entered Second Life to take part in The Dating Casino, a game show. As part of the audience she could send texts, respond to other people in the virtual room and participate as an avatar with a name, face and phygital identity that got noticed. Friend requests and a sign up to be a contestant for a future show had her coming back, but all as the avatar she logged in as, watched on a flat screen, controlled with the keyboard. This is now old technology, new technology wears a VR headset and has wrap around viewing.
VR content of a theatrical kind is accomplished with something called volumetric video: catch the awesome Diego Priulsky in his TED talk 4 years ago, or see what Arcturus studio is up to here from 4 months ago. If perception is nine tenths of reality, VR changes so much of what we "see" and take in around us. We can enter a scene, and get the close - ups we want, over the shoulder shots and / or a wide angle sense of our choosing. The dramatic, comedic and even melodic action takes place right in front, behind and around in many degrees of viewing freedom. We can be impacted not just by light, shiny objects and movement, but by depth and the color of human emotion felt in a very personal way.
Naturally, I see some kind of game show, which would be offer a high level of interaction to anyone who logs in to become a contestant and play. Having fun with a Virtual Reality Puzzle Dash along with other people in the VR Space from all over the world is both exciting and is to come. This space is where I intend to create content, as engagement with VR, even for a limited amount of time is mind opening, and often heart opening, ie. moving in an intimate way.
With VR, we enter to leave some of the real world behind, just as we watch TV or YouTube to get a break, to get away. In VR we move inside the screen and experience the content in a different way. No longer looking at it as 2D with a flat screen, we are inside 3DTV. With the experiences I see coming, we are involved not with animations made in Unreal Engine, but with real humans who have been filmed in volumetric video. We also have in this, 6DOF, which means we get to walk around and see the action from any point of view (or at least as far as our room space will allow.)
There hasn't been a lot of scripted programming with human actors to take advantage of how compelling VR is. The next step, imho is entertainment you can feel because you are IN the Seinfeld living room, or literally Dancing with the Stars.
We're going to need well-produced product for this. In the beginning of the TV era, in order to have content for their programs, the broadcast networks had studios where they shot the series which ran. In order to have quality content beyond games, the VR industry needs series-like content for the headset. Content will drive adoption of VR. Entertainment content that can be experienced means a production studio that can deliver it. It needs to combine great narrative, with actors (once everyone gets off strike,) music, a CGI studio to create sets in Unreal Engine and Volumetric Video Capture. PookyMedia has a few properties we are developing for this.
The content has to be good. A show volumized in the VR Space, entered into by someone wearing a VR Headset has a new level of sensation and interaction with what is going on around them and has to evoke a sense of humor, realness and relatability. The intensity of dramatic encounters and comedic relief is high, a scripted show is not a video game. This is not watching in the traditional sense, but a being part of, with proximity and emotion. We experience the conversation between two people as if we are part of it. This is an incredible way to be part of a series as everything is heightened in VR, from surround sound to visual immersion, and it enthralls us in a different way.
This is the next step for PookyMedia, we look forward to your joining us in them, dancing shoes on of course!
If you have a question, send it to info@pookymedia.com with Metaquette in the Subject line and it will be answered.
