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The History of VR Technology

Lesson 3 from: Intro to VR & 360 Live-Action Photography and Video

Barry Pousman

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Lesson Info

3. The History of VR Technology

Lesson Info

The History of VR Technology

How did we get here? How did we get to creating content? That isn't 360 degrees all simultaneously? And it's video literal video frames, all moving in sync like a giant quilt wrapped around you. How did we get here? Well, in 19 thirties we had the view Master stereoscopic. So three D left and right eye. You could look at images and things will be in the foreground and things will be in the background. And they played with that perception of depth, right? They could create a false perception of depth through having a left Diana ride A in the 19 thirties. In the 19 fifties and 19 sixties, they came up with this idea that you could activate the senses when you showed people films. So this device, the Sensor Rama, had five films in it. In each of those films, leveraged all of your senses, they leveraged a sense of touch. So you put your hands down on the pad. They leverage, smell and site and sound right. Um and it's really sort of that beginning of the smell, a vision. This was the sense ...

o rama, and it's the beginnings of er as we know it. In the eighties, it became extremely popular for the military to start doing simulations in VR. And so the Navy Air Force people were practicing training, Um, simulating real life experiences through technology. Um, in 2013 new player on the scene using Kickstarter Oculus, right Oculus. This is the development kit Developers kit one DK one, um, way before the Oculus rift. Technically, that we see today, um, this is a really, really amazing sort of display of consumer grade electron ICS consumer grade little LCD screen that sat in front of that sits in the screen in the top of the headset. You've got headphone jack in the back. All the wiring is just standard wiring USB cables. Um, sort of the It's kind of a hacked version of all of our technologies we have today, um, and it plugs in. It's powered by and plugs into your computer. Um, it was a huge coup when, uh, when Facebook bought it in 14 $2002 billion Facebook paid for Oculus. Uh, in 2014 also, Google cardboard came out. Google, who has been very interested in this three d mapped spaces sort of game, uh, had come out with an idea. What if we democratized VR? We made it so wasn't super expensive. We actually open sourced the way people could watch V. R s. So they created a Google cardboard. Of course, it's made out of cardboard, but more importantly, what it does, what Google did was allow everyone to be able to make their own ghoul harbored eso. Any company in the world can take the plans and create a plastic house can create the cardboard house, can create something else out of any material that is designed, like that shaped like that and has those specifications. And Google will give it there sort of stamp of approval. Um, and say, this is a Google car board approved device. Um, one of the cool things about this device is one of the qualifications criteria for becoming a ghoul approved Google cardboard approved devices. You can't have a strap. One thing they found out when they put these headsets on Children was they would tend to walk forward. Andre were very worried. They would, like, walk forward right into traffic. You know, if you had a strap on you don't get. Take it off when your mom is calling your name or if you're getting scared, you sort of feel like you can't you trapped in their eso Part of the part of what makes a Google cardboard approved device, that is ah, is that they don't have straps. Um, so another one that's great. And a very comparable experience is the Mattel view master today that the View master three D um, and it's it just takes any phone. It's a phone agnostic. So any kind of phone you got IPhone, whatever you got, um, you consigned it into Google Harbert or that Mattel View Master, which I think is maybe $19 at best Buy these days. Um, in 2015 HTC vibe comes out now. We talked about this earlier. The HTC vibe allows you to walk around the rooms room scale. Okay. And so, for the first time, we moved from looking around in a circle using your computer, looking around in a circle, using your phone now walking around the room and pressing things using your hands. Um Teoh interact with the content eso One year after the next we have this huge sort of upswell of innovation around consumer technology NVR 2015 as well. Samsung Gear VR comes out now That's this headset, and this had said, has been through three generations. Now, Um, when it first came out, it looked like this in the picture. Then this is the second version, and there's a brand new version that's sort of a Navy blue, they continued iterated. I mean, it's kind of amazing that Samsung was in the game so early. Um, and it's been a huge. It's been a huge part of their business and a huge driving force on what they're up to in the future. Um, in 2016 Google Daydream came out right, so not too long ago, the Google Daydream kinetics. They lovingly referred to it as sort of sweat pants VR because it's sort of fabric like on the outside. It does have a remote controller, so that does give you a sense of agency. In some ways, um, that the Samsung Gear VR or maybe the cardboard didn't and so all of a sudden you have a pointer. You can interact with things and press buttons a little bit easier. Um, in 2016 as well. The PlayStation VR came out now. PlayStation, of course. 50 million homes in America. Um, PlayStation four was, you know, it was a big thing when it came out, and and all of a sudden, PlayStation for now, includes you can you can add on a VR headset. And it has controllers it does tracking. Um, so has that sort of similar experience to the HTC vibe. And, um and so this is just another sort of, uh, *** in the wall. Right? Um, that toward mainstream adoption of er, um, now, just to say, all of these devices are a little different, right? Some of these devices allow you to walk through the space of the content. Some of these devices, like touch and change the outcome of the story, you know? So maybe you follow out the butler instead of sticking with the man character, and then what is he going to go up to? What's he going to go do? So there's there's this idea that we're not just building these sort of stories on rails anymore. These sort of shop by shop by shop paths, linear paths, But we're actually creating Mawr. Um, more discoverable worlds. Mawr worlds where audiences can interact, influence the outcome. Knock over the coffee cup in the scene and the character might say, Oh, sorry, can I help you clean that up? Or maybe the character doesn't clean things up in, and you learn that through that experience. But you wouldn't have learned that. How do you not knock the coffee Cup over? And so there's definitely kind of the future of storytelling all wrapped into VR, right? No longer do we just sit back and watch a movie. Now, in order to watch the movie, even in a 3 60 movie, which will be talking about mostly today you have to turn all around. There's opportunities where you might miss something, or you might find out something that no one else saw. Um, so the screen, the actual real estate of the film, is much, much bigger all of a sudden. And so we're going to really look at in the next section why it's important to maximize optimize that whole, that whole real estate of your sphere. In 3 60 video

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Great content! Great overview on storytelling and an intro to 360.

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