Tag: VR

Disney Movies VR

chrisregan1Leave a comment

My primary reason for starting this blog was to keep a log of all the VR games and experiences I’ve tried. I was always intending to include Samsung Gear VR experiences as well as PlayStation VR although when I actually picked up my phone and looked at a few of the apps in my library I did wonder if there would be enough to write about. The Gear VR experiences tended to be short, occasionally experimental but more often than not promotional and yet there is something unintentionally weird and fascinating about even the most mundane experiences in VR.

Disney Movies VR is a perfect example of a VR oddity. This free app is mostly a collection of 360-degree trailers for Disney movies that are a few years old now (The BFG, Pete’s Dragon, Rogue One etc) although there are a couple of interesting experiences. Some of these are unintentionally creepy, like Lumière’s Dress Rehearsal in which you are sitting in the dining room from Beauty and the Beast and Lumière sings “Be Our Guest” at you while furniture and plates dance in front of your eyes. There is something about being unable to move out of the chair that makes it seem more like a surreal kidnap scenario, which I suppose in some ways it always was. There is one particularly terrifying moment where something I assume to be a tall wooden hat stand leans in front of you to feed you soup. This experience does have some interactivity so you can grab things like plates and spoons as they pass by but the limited control available makes you feel ineffective and adds to the sensation of being bound to the chair. In a desperate attempt to escape I tried throwing a candle at Lumière but it just dropped pathetically to the table, adding to the pervading sense of uselessness.

Then there are the two Jungle Book experiences, which are entirely intentionally terrifying. In one you are eaten by a giant snake. This really made me question who these experiences are aimed at but at the same time it’s this apparent lack of direction that embodies everything I love about these odd little moments in VR. They play like experiments, most not entirely successful but all at least trying to provoke some kind of reaction. It reminds me of the early days of CD-Rom software, when my favourite band The Residents briefly became tech pioneers and created The Residents Freak Show, which remains one of my favourite PC-related experiences of all time. If someone could recreate The Residents Freak Show in VR that would be something to see.

There are also a bunch of Star Wars experiences, the most interesting of which is surprisingly the behind-the-scenes footage from Rogue One. It’s purely a 360-degree video and I’m not a fan of the film but the sensation of being there on set as they shoot a couple of battle scenes is actually quite impressive.

However, the most interesting section of this app for me is the menu area. You stand at the entrance to the Disney castle. To your left is Stark Tower, home of the Avengers, although no Marvel experiences have been added to the app to date (and given the general lack of updates I’m not sure there ever will be). To your right are AT-ATs and various other Star Wars vehicles. The interesting point about this location, and it’s a recurring feeling in VR, is that it comes with a profound sense of loneliness. I assume this area is supposed to recreate the experience of being at Disneyland and the various experiences are the “rides”, but there is something deeply unsettling about being in a theme park alone at night. This feeling is amplified when you finish an experience and return to the menu area, which is now silent except for the sound of the odd, distant firework, like you’ve left the theme park then snuck back in after hours. I was briefly obsessed with watching urban explorer videos on YouTube and my personal favouites were those in which people broke into theme parks, ideally those that have been closed down and left to rot. There is something about seeing a place that was designed to be full of people and their associated noise suddenly quiet and empty that is inherently creepy. That’s the feeling the Disney Movies VR app creates and again, probably not their intention, but it’s there.

In VR creepiness is never far away.

Loading screen text…

chrisregan1Leave a comment

When I was younger I wanted to try Virtual Reality more than anything else. I’ve always enjoyed games for the escapism they offer; the opportunity to live as someone else in what is generally a much more exciting world than the one I’m in and to do so without risk of serious harm. VR offered the possibility of taking that to the next level.

I don’t consider myself a ‘gamer’ exactly. I love games and have spent many many hours exploring different worlds on different platforms, but it’s not the ‘game’ part that appeals to me. I’m not that interested in the mass slaughter of NPCs, winning epic races or battling space aliens. I’ve always preferred the quiet moments, like driving a truck through the countryside between cities on GTA: San Andreas or exploring the surface of a barren planet on the first Mass Effect game. I like the character moments too, when they work. Games can provide such a strong sense of empathy or connection between audience and character, even the poorly written ones. Most of all I like stories. I like being taken on a narrative journey. I will never skip a cutscene to get to the action.​

I’ll write more about my relationship with VR in a later post but for now just know that from the moment I first tried on the headset I realised there was so much more going on than I first anticipated. Sure, on a basic level virtual reality is simply putting a screen really close to your face and tricking your brain into perceiving depth, but when you add in the scope of the 360 degree view, the sounds, the way you interact with the experience, the memories it generates, the physical effects it can have, not to mention the way it allows you to connect to a narrative, it becomes clear there is so much to talk about. Of course, people do talk about it on review sites and subreddits and YouTube videos but what I find lacking is anything other than vague descriptions of how these experiences feel.​

There’s a reason I think this is important. I recently visited Whitechapel Gallery with my wife and a couple of friends. It had been some time since I’d been to a gallery and I’d kind of forgotten how to do it. You have to commit to art in a gallery. You have to look at it and clear our everything else until you feel something. What you feel will be different from what someone else feels, there’s no “right” way to feel despite the artist’s intention and that’s what makes art special. What you feel may not be positive but as long as you feel something the art has done it’s job. All art has the capacity to make you feel something, you just have to commit to it.

Video games demand commitment by their very nature. You can’t check your phone while running from the law in Red Dead Redemption 2, not without pausing and breaking the flow. Putting aside online gaming, games are also primarily solitary experiences. They may play for an audience, that’s why Twitch happened, but ultimately the game is there to connect with the person holding the controller. VR games take this even further, making the experience even more solitary and making it even harder to look away. Like it or not, when you play VR you are committed to the art. What that art has to reveal is what I intend to explore in this blog.

This is not a review site, I have no interest in whether VR experiences are “good” or “bad”. Nor is this an academic study, although I am interested in academic readings of VR and may explore this area further in the future. Imagine instead that this is an old-fashioned adventurer’s journal with scribbled notes and diagrams on frayed pages between a worn cover.

This is an account of my adventures in VR and you are more than welcome to join me.