Gateway Content or Just Another Gimmick?
The mobile community along with film producers and ad agencies have clung to the notion that 360 videos will lead the wave for user adoption. More than a year out, it does not seem to be the case. Now why is this? 360 development today can capture real places, taking care of the human empathy problem with game engine development. You don’t need to be a software export to get started nor is the entry-level equipment prohibitive. Samsung has just released their 2nd gen Gear 360 for instance, which gets you started for under $300. It’s great that the videos have value beyond VR, since many platforms including Facebook support mobile 360 viewing, however, there are still fundamental problems that will prevent 360 VR from going critical.
Quality Issues
There are some good examples of high quality content out there, from the Cirque du Soliel experiences by Felix & Paul Studios to sports footage by NextVR. Depth also comes at a price where true stereoscopic vision requires high-end equipment. The Google Jump rig may be leading in offering realistic depth which greatly adds to the send of presence. Even then, what we’re seeing still looks muddy–much more like 80s TV than real life. Another problem is distortion, where the image from the center to the peripheral of your viewing is inconsistent with the natural eye, causing nausea and breaking the illusion. All of these issues, along with the overall resolution limits of displays need to be resolved to justify the time and cost of putting on a headset. Many of these problems are caused by the enormous quantity of data involved to the extent that several companies are trading viewing angle for contrast and truer parallax. At SXSW, one of the most compelling limited angle viewing was done by Cam4VR, a company targeting adult entertainment that offered real-time 180 content with enviable vividness. I expect the home market to follow, with 180 degree 3D cameras become the IT format after the novelty of looking all around you wears off.
Beyond 1-Point Viewing
There is a slew of bleeding edge cameras coming out that offer 6 degrees of freedom– that is the ability to move your head instead of just rotating it. Along with the additional immersion, this technique also reduces the high distortion problem because it offers true volumetric data instead of just mapping an image onto a sphere. I’ve already talked about Lytro and Light Field technology in a prior article, so I’ll spend more time discussing Facebook’s recently announted x24 Surround 360. Other companies like HypeVR use additional depth sensors to let you move around a fixed volume. With these choices on the horizon offering such a leap in immersion, it makes it hard to see how tradition 360 will compete or ever become a standard with staying power.
Interaction Needed
There will always be a place for passive entertainment. Even now, there are millions of people who enjoy watching others play through games rather than pick up the controllers themselves. But in order for the other senses to come into play, we need to be able to do more than just look and hear around us. On one level, non-interactive yet multi-sensory content could become a big hit such as passive 360 where you could still smell, touch or taste. This would be a more realistic take on those 4D rides at universal. In this scenario, you are interacting–the content is just simply not interacting back. Next would be a way to become part of the story, which would open up multiple levels of reactiveness, from simple path routing to complex open-world systems. The end-game would be content that allows multiple people to partake in the same narrative.
Content
We would know if there was a “killer app” equivalent to 360 content by its ability to sell headsets. Maybe the consumable, throw-away nature of in-home video viewing makes it difficult for us to feel its value. Imax has just opened an IMAX VR Experience Centre in LA this year to experiment with offering premium content to the general public. We can imagine that right behind this will be supplemental movie experiences, like a 5 or 10 minute sequence for the new Marvel films. The only killer content that matters for the home market will be the one with sustainable presence, like an ongoing series with regular releases or social media site with high quality home content. Both should be on their way by 2018 as the quality of mobile viewers and capture equipment improves.
For 360 to survive, it will need to adapt until it becomes the definitive seated, real-world content experience. At that point, the distinction between this type of media and other VR experiences may become so blurred as to be trivial.