Review Of Oculus’ First In-House VR Film “Lost”: Adorable, But Not Interactive

Oculus just premiered its Story Studio’s first virtual reality cinema experience Lost that’s designed to demonstrate the narrative potential of VR to filmmakers. The experience features a massive robotic hand trapsing around a darkened forest in search of its body. While cute, the film doesn’t push the limits of VR much.

All the action takes place directly in front of you, with just one scene overhead. It’s not interactive, and doesn’t require you to follow the action far out of a primary frame. While the forest feels immersive in VR, the film could work just fine as a film, and that’s somewhat of a failure considering the point of Story Studio.

Beyond “Lost”, Oculus’ Pixar exec-led Story Studio has five more experiences in the works, including: “Dear Angelica” which puts viewers in an illustration, “Bullfighter” which puts you in the ing facing down a raging bull, and “Henry” whic demonstrates the potential of comedy in VR.

As I detailed in my launch story on Story Studio this morning, filmmakers aren’t quite sure how to build experiences in VR. The goal of the studio is to pioneer narrative VR and share the insights and experiences with filmmakers and the public.

Lost will be shown to media and guests today at Sundance Film Festival. Eventually, the plan is to make Lost publicly available alongside the launch of the first consumer-grade Oculus Rift later this year, potentially through Oculus’ experience store.

from TechCrunch http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CDpdSjG9QCY/

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