Issue 64  3rd June 2016

Google's 3 rules for designing VR

We're still at the stage of VR where we can make an assumption about how people will behave in it, and then have assumption quickly trashed. So a team at Google have been busy running 60 experiments in just 30 weeks in order to learn as much as possible.

For example, with VR keyboards the general practice is to look at each key individually in order to type it, as if your eyes were laser pointers. Google found that people were actually way faster at typing and more accurate if they hit the keys with sticks like a marimba or xylophone.

The article also shows experiments around vertical space, full body avatars, social trolling and ignoring physics. It's a really interesting read with some great gifs!

"By allowing a user to throw a picture at a virtual wall, but by making that picture stick and resize perfectly for the context, users felt both delighted by the action's whimsy and satisfied with its efficiency."

Oculus Story Studio — Binaural audio for narrative VR

George Lucas once said that audio is 50% of the experience. This has never been truer than it is with VR, where we hijack your perception and transport you to new worlds.

This blog from Story Studio at Oculus delves into the crucial role that audio plays to assist visual storytelling, from building an emotional connection with a scene, to guiding the viewer's attention to story elements outside of their field of vision. It speaks about the immersive power of binaural audio usage in VR storytelling, and the challenges it presents to content makers.

Oculus has released its own free binaural audio plug-in, the binaural Oculus Spatializer, which the Story team used to craft audio in both Henry and Dear Angelica experiences.

World's first live smartphone VR camera revealed

It's not exactly a smartphone with a VR camera, it's a VR camera that attaches to a smartphone. But, although it hasn't officially launched yet, the initial spec suggests that it might be a real driver of consumer-produced 360 degree content. As well as a smartphone, it can also be attached to other moving objects like drones, cars, your dog- whatever object takes your fancy. It also delivers live streaming over wifi.

Scare yourself inside a surreal 360-degree version of 'The Shining'

Here at Rerun, we're always on the look out for new VR films. But one thing we were curious about, can you retrospectively turn an old fixed frame film into a 360 degree experience?

One YouTuber has given it a go and created a 360 degree version of The Shining by pulling together an enormous number of stills from the film. The result is eerie and kind of disturbing but since the film is equally so, it's probably a perfect test case for the experiment.