The Oculus Rift will push VR to the mainstream
Oculus Rift, the virtual reality headset, is to move beyond its gaming centric roots and become ‘an important part of the future of storytelling’, a Special FX leader has said.
Speaking with TrustedReviews this week, Sir William Sargent, whose company Framestore is responsible for the jaw-dropping CG visuals on recent blockbuster Gravity, suggested that Oculus Rift will allow immersive storytelling to hit new levels.
“Oculus is pretty amazing and something we obviously love,” Sargent told us. “For us Oculus Rift and virtual reality is going to be a very important platform.”
He added: “For immersive storytelling we are very excited about it and it will be a very important part of what we do in the future.”
Although predicting Oculus Rift is important to the industry, Sargent has admitted there is still debate around how best to utilise the technology.
“The software guys get a bit more latitude at the moment because we understand the film process, we don’t yet understand where Oculus and virtual reality can go,” he said.
“We don’t try to second guess the technology, we use that technology to tell the story.”
Despite these uncertainties, Framestore, which has also provided CG and Special FX for a mass of other movies and visual projects – including Avatar and the Harry Potter franchise – has already done one Rift-based project.
“We’ve done the Game of Thrones thing for it which was a big success,” the Framestore co-found said in reference to the ‘Ascend the Wall’ attraction which allowed Rift wearers to scale the 700ft virtual ice wall from the fantasy epic.
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