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Movies Technology

Zero Point: The First 360-Degree Movie Made For the Oculus Rift 53

Posted by samzenpus from the look-around dept.
Zothecula writes "The Oculus Rift has carved out a sizable reputation for itself among gamers, but virtual reality has many applications beyond playing video games. Now one production studio is preparing to release the first movie shot specifically to be watched through the VR headset. The upcoming film, called Zero Point, will focus on the history and development of virtual reality technology, while allowing viewers the freedom to look around each scene as the movie progresses."
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Zero Point: The First 360-Degree Movie Made For the Oculus Rift More

Zero Point: The First 360-Degree Movie Made For the Oculus Rift

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  • 3D movies, where you are not static no more. I wonder if limitation is there, will it be Occulus only thing?

  • Zero point to this movie... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...other then to generate publicity or to give the small number of developer kit owners something to blog about.

    When are they actually going to ship the consumer version of the Oculus Rift?

    The kickstarter was in August 2012 and all they seem to have done since then is spend kickstarter / VC money and repeatedly redesign thier product as newer technologies become available / cheaper. Still no date for actually shipping a product.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The kickstarter was in August 2012 and all they seem to have done since then is spend kickstarter / VC money and repeatedly redesign thier product as newer technologies become available / cheaper. Still no date for actually shipping a product.

      It's a hardware product, they can't just fix it in a patch, it needs to be good enough before they ship it or they'll destroy all the hype they've built for VR.

      • You make good points, but the ratio of the amount of hype to count of devices in people's hands is a bit skewed, no?

        I'm sure the product will be great someday, but I'm getting sick of hearing about it.

        Every time I hear yet another blurb about the Oculus Rift and The Wonders That May be Had, I start to think of the Moller air car or Duke Nukem.

  • Finally! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21, 2014 @03:45AM (#46302369)

    A chance to see what the gaffer actually does to the best boy with the key grip.

  • I doubt that this 360 film technology would support positional tracking of head movements, which seems to be a major benefit for immersivness in new version of Rift - plus not controlling your movements might be also quite confusing. Glyph is probably better tailored for viewing rail-road movies where you can just move your screen around.

    _Real_ breakthrough would be to mix movies and game/rendering engines and let film render on the fly. This way, all the positional tracking/limited movement control etc cou

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Alejux ( 2800513 )

      You can't compare the Glyph, who lets you watch a screen floating in front of you, with the 110 FOV Rift, who places you virtually inside the content. Positional tracking in not that important if all you'll be doing is turning around this or that way, while seated at a chair. Can you imagine having a 360 3D live video being broadcast from a court seat in an NBA game, or a tennis or football match, with all the notions of scale and depth you get with real 3D? This will be a huge thing with sports and o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by abies ( 607076 )

        Rift is aimed at different audience than Glyph. This is why I think it is more tailored for Glyph, because it might be better to have high-quality moving screen in front of you, rather than medicore quality full-surround experience. It is all about pixels. Do you prefer to have 1000x1000 pixels centered on the action, without seeing hands of people sitting next to you on the bench, or do you want to have only 400x400 pixels for actual action, with pronounced screen-door effect on top of that, but having big

    • It's actually really easy to track head movement with the rift. The problem with this technology is that it works best with CG. It's one thing to put the player in a predefined grid of 3D objects, but it's an entirely different beast to create the models and grid while shooting live action. For this to work, all movies would have to be filmed in a green room; or be completely CG.

  • Seems odd that neither the summary didn't link to the demonstration video player on Condition One [reelhouse.org] (it's kinda slow to load, and the first couple of scenes aren't '3D'). As you can see in the 2D [businessinsider.com.au] version, it's just playing a 2D video on a virtual curved screen that extends half way around the user's viewpoint; that's enough to look pretty damned cool in the later scenes with crowds and on an escalator though.

    Worth noting all the scenes there involved the viewpoint remaining either static or very predictably a

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • But this is probably the first time when the consumer has a realistic option of obtaining a VR system at home which can play a 360 movie.
  • I mean it would be really scary if you felt like you were right in the middle of a bunch of college kids who are about to be murdered.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I mean it would be really scary if you felt like you were right in the middle of a bunch of college kids who are about to be murdered.

      Yes, it would be really scary to be right in the middle of a bunch of college kids, and yes, they would be about to be murdered.

  • Exactly what sizable reputation has it created among gamers, exactly? Sure, most have probably heard of it, but I don't think it has much of any reputation, good or bad, yet. This is just yet another Slashvertisement.

    • No? Myself and most of my gamer friends are looking forward to this with immense anticipation - especially when combined with positional tracking and a walking platform (or possibly even just a Wii Fit) we're talking about a Holodeck Mark 2 (Mark 1 being the rise flight simulators and other first-person games a few decades ago, as heavily augmented by imagination).

      • Sure, if and when it's working with widespread support. Anticipating something doesn't give it a reputation. Proof that it's got value does.

        • The various reviews of the dev kit and the existing library of games that already support it (directly or via mods) constitute proof in our minds, even if no additional games ever get made. I'm only waiting for the commercial version because it sounds like it will be a large improvement, and I can't quite justify buying both.

  • I'm still waiting for a movie that allows the viewers' choices to affect it. The technology is here for home video, and, if it ever took off, it wouldn't take much for purely theaters to build 3-4 button "voting consoles" into the armrests or something (as conventional film would not work).

    • Such full-motion video "games" do get created from time to time, and IIRC they're about as popular as CYOA books, which judging by library populations were never more than a childhood novelty. The problem is that you need to write and record many times more footage than for a singular plotline - even a clever composition where your choices only shift you between a couple main plotlines augmented by scene variations depending on past choices would probably take at least 2-5x more footage to create, meaning

      • I guess it has to start somewhere. Perhaps a tv show, that has voting after every episode, so next week we see the results, would be a good start. Eventually, a live tv show, with votes during the commercial breaks. I guess it'd have to be good improv performers. I guess I'm surprised that someone that either a rich Spielberg-type or some indie super director hasn't done it yet, even, as you said, with a short. Lynch or Cronenberg would we rad.

        • As I said, it has been done - just marketed as computer "games" since there's not really much interactivity support built into your DVD player. I could see them perhaps start to catch on with VR where the immersion in some exotic locale could make up for the shortcomings. And heck, we've already got the early stages of the "vote for next weeks story" in form of things like American Idol, but the plot is so thin it doesn't make all that much difference. And actually - I had a friend tell me about some show

  • 360 Edition of Dragonboobs, er, Game of Thrones!

    Oh noes! Daenerys' clothes have come off, again, leaving only a blond wig. Now you get to choose between a boob shot and an ass shot. Quick, look down! You almost stepped on Tyrion Lannister.

  • Can't they retarget those IMAX movies for use with the Oculus.

    I know it's not 360 degrees, but one could *simulate* that one is sitting inside an IMAX theatre, I suppose.

  • Reality Television (Score:3)

    by dohnut ( 189348 ) on Friday February 21, 2014 @10:17AM (#46303883)

    I can't wait until they bring this to reality TV. I'll finally get to experience reality like it was meant to be experienced!

    • I'm looking forward to sitcom television. Maybe I can finally see who the people are that make up the laugh track every time a lame joke is made.

  • Porn (Score:3)

    by Andrio ( 2580551 ) on Friday February 21, 2014 @11:46AM (#46304501)

    I have an Oculus Rift, and I tried this 360 degree porn movie on it. It was pretty neat--the POV was from the guy's head, and you could look around at any of the three girls around you. It wasn't 3D (that would be _amazing_, to have 3D and 360 degrees), but it was still really cool.

  • A looooong time ago:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle-Vision_360%C2%B0 [wikipedia.org]

    Circle-Vision 360 is a film technique, refined by The Walt Disney Company, that uses nine cameras for nine huge screens arranged in a circle. The cameras are usually mounted on top of an automobile for scenes through cities and highways, while films such as The Timekeeper use a static camera and many CGI effects. The first film was America the Beautiful (1955 version) in the Circarama theater, which would eventually become Circle-Visi

  • The problem I see with this is that with current movies, the movie maker is able to control what you're looking at. To tell the story they need to make sure that you see certain things at certain points. With a movie like this, you could miss a major plot point because you were looking at something else. Movie makers will have to change the way they structure stories for technology like this.

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