Let’s for a moment set aside war, celebrity deaths, terrorism and the impeding political Armageddon, and focus on what was good about 2016: VR.

2016 was a great year for VR, if little else
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This was the year when Virtual Reality became a buzzword and we started talking about “experiences,” and how immersive they all were. But as exciting as these have undoubtedly been, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The really good stuff is yet to come, but 2016 gave some good hints about what’s in in store.

As the real world becomes an increasingly uncertain and unwelcoming place, perhaps it’s no coincidence that we’re so keen to make virtual worlds work out. Maybe we’re indeed headed for a Ready Player One Oasis-type scenario, but if the range and depth of VR I’ve come across over the past few months is anything to go by, it might not turn out to be such a grim fate after all…

VR let us get that Superman(or woman) feeling by flying around in VR using Google Earth and witness Andy Murray’s Wimbledon Victory from the middle of Centre Court, or the Olympics in Rio. With VR people can already experience different places such as West Hollywood, but the technology can also help you fight phobias, and even reunite an elderly war hero with the community he helped save during World War II.

You can get that Superman(or woman) feeling by flying around in VR using Google Earth
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We’ve also seen some beautiful and powerful examples of how VR is being used in storytelling and I talked to creators about the shaping the language and conventions of this new medium. When leveraged properly, VR has also shown great potential as a tool for tackling difficult issues and engendering empathy. From the BBC project showing the plight of a refugee family fleeing Syria to making us care about the demise of coral reefs.

From virtual books to sports coaching many companies are exploring the potential of VR for education
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From virtual books to sports coaching many companies are exploring the potential of VR for education, as the opportunities for engaging students with content quickly become apparent and tools like Google cardboard made the technology easily accessible to teachers and students around the world.

In April I went to Linden Lab’s Headquarters in San Francisco and discussed the potential of VR for education with their CEO Ebbe Altberg, who explained how their virtual platform Second Life had already been used by Universities and that while the creative SL community did use the legacy platform, they were now investing in a brand new platform to allow users to generate and share their own VR content, Sansar.

We also discussed how the platform would inevitably be used for less “Safe for Work” purposes and how Virtual Reality Porn might help to drive the technology towards mass-market adoption much as it did for the Internet itself. While in the beautiful City by the Bay I also geeked out at their amazing arcade museum and mused about how we can see the evolution of VR from those early machines.

Tools like Google cardboard made VR accessible to teachers and students
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Sansar is not the only player emerging in the social VR space, however. Earlier in the year I saw some interesting developments from Improbable in London and AltspaceVR is pushing ahead with initiatives like allowing punters to watch live events such as comedy shows in VR. One of the challenges of making social interaction in such platforms, work, however, is to create a sense of presence – which requires creating more realistic personalized avatars – and making people comfortable in VR for longer periods of time, which means tackling issues such as simulator sickness.

One challenge of Social VR work is to create a sense of presence, and that means better avatars
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And let’s not forget games of course, VR is a whole lot of fun and although I definitely don’t have as much time as I’d like for playing them, I came across some interesting titles, such as HOVR by independent Lebanese studio Game Cooks, and popular Swedish game SVRVIVE, not to mention my own personal, longstanding obsession: Resident Evil

Even without the expensive headsets, people have been doing amazing things with AR
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When I finally got my hands on the HoloLens for the first time I was rather blown away, and while Magic Leap came under intense fire for allegedly misleading people about its demo videos, causing some to question whether they can deliver on their promise of fully immersive, untethered mixed reality – there were plenty of signs that AR and MR have a bright future indeed.

I was blown away by my HoloLens Demo
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Even without the expensive headsets, people have been doing amazing things with AR such as supporting surgeons in war zones and teaching children digital and creative skills. Many of the interesting projects I came across were from relatively small companies exploring specific niches; One start-up in Russia was crowdfunding development of Mixed Reality lessons to bring subjects like Chemistry and Physics to life, and even the Adult industry got in on the action, producing a low-budget workaround to project live holograms of a much naughtier kind to users around the world using just their mobile phones and a cheap adaptor. And with players like Apple giving out strong signals that they are about to enter this “ARena” (sorry, couldn’t resist) things are bound to get very interesting in 2017.

Watch this space.

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Are Holograms going to forever change the way we learn? HoloStudy, a Russian start-up developing content for the Microsoft HoloLens certainly thinks so.

In this article for IDG Connect I talk to them about why Holograms and Mixed Reality are the best tools to enable learning and engage students, and how they’re hoping their newly launched crowdfunding campaign will help them make these Mixed Reality lessons accessible students all over the world, for free.

Holograms will enable visual learning on an entirely new level and revolutionise education
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Making holograms in the classroom a reality, by @alicebonasio from @CIOonline – https://t.co/AbWOH7ucRs

— Technology Experts (@IDGCN) December 19, 2016

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Magic Leap has been the poster child for Mixed Reality ever since they unveiled their first impressive demo footage, but questions are now being asked about whether they can really deliver the mind-blowing type of experience promised by those early videos.

This article for UploadVR sets out what we know so far about the notoriously secretive start-up and talks to other key players in the Augmented/Mixed Reality space.

With a thriving #MR ecosystem emerging, is Magic Leap's walled garden approach still a good strategy?
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With the HoloLens producing impressive early results and a thriving ecosystem starting to develop around MR technology, can the “Walled Garden” approach favoured by Magic Leap still prove an effective strategy? It’s difficult to say at this point, but we’d certainly like to have a chance to ask them!

The future of mixed reality is much bigger than Magic Leap. via @alicebonasio #MR #MixedReality https://t.co/2DOyuCsVb1 pic.twitter.com/FAp0zWIPKD

— Upload (@UploadVR) December 16, 2016

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Whenever you try to explain what the HoloLens does, or what the flip Mixed Reality means, you can always rely on one failsafe fallback: That scene in Star Wars: A New Hope where Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi finally get R2-D2 to work and out beams Princess Leia, in all her blue-tinted holographic glory, asking for their assistance.

Most of us still see holograms as the stuff of science fiction, but the truth is that if  you’re lucky enough to get your hands on a HoloLens they’re already a pretty solid-looking reality. What it isn’t yet, however, is widely available. As usual, however, the adult industry can be relied on to push the boundaries in popularising cutting-edge technology. That’s what CamSoda is attempting to do with the launch of Holo-Cam, which they also compare with the iconic Star Wars scene above.

Star Wars is still the universal failsafe explainer for Holograms and #MixedReality
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And while you might not want to see Obi-Wan and Leia in that particular light, you can  read more about the future of sexy holograms and watch their (Safe for Work) video on the Future of Sex website

CamSoda is launching live holographic streaming of webcam performances https://t.co/6A0MOrLXfI #augmented reality

— FutureofSex (@FutureofSex) December 15, 2016

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In this UploadVR article I talk to 3 companies pushing the boundaries of 3D avatar design and get the perspective from Virtual Reality experts such as Professor Jeremy Bailenson from Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab on what we’re looking for in our virtual skins. From body scans to morphing to animated selfies, the future is bright, if a little weird.

Immersion and meaningful social interaction in #VR will only happen when we feel comfortable in our virtual skins
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These 3 companies are working to give us better bodies in VR. via @alicebonasio #VR https://t.co/cWaoofyYEU pic.twitter.com/eL7YoCXw7K

— Upload (@UploadVR) December 13, 2016

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“Welcome to Life in Holograms – this is my room,” says HoloLens Evangelist Colin Edwards as he welcomes me to my Mixed Reality initiation.

With a couple of gestures and voice commands, I can make my virtual TV screen as big as I want
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We start off by looking at a wall, which, in the real world, contains two pictures. Through the HoloLens, however, I can now see 3 additional photographs placed between them. Colin points proudly to one of his son in his football gear before we turn to look at the opposite wall, which is adorned by two abstract holographic images downloaded from the Internet.

“Say I’m looking to buy a picture, but wanted to see how it will look on my wall before I decide, I can do that,” he explains before asking me which of the two is my least favourite. “The red one,” I decide.

Colin then instructs me to look at the red picture and say “remove”. Just like that, the offending image disappears. I then look at the remaining image, say the word “adjust,” and with a pinching motion of my thumb and index finger I drag it so that it is positioned centrally on the wall.

Next up, I sit on the (real) sofa to watch a virtual TV. With a couple of gestures I drag the corner of the screen to make it about 3 times bigger, and play a high resolution video. When I’m done watching I simply tell it to “stop.”

It's a good job the HoloLens is not available for the general public to buy yet, or it would be an expensive…
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Then the REAL fun begins. I select a tiny T-Rex hologram from a board on the corner (other options included a unicorn, a zombie, and a rather cute bulldog) Under Colin’s watchful eye, I place it on the floor a few feet away from us and utter the magic spell – sorry, voice command – which makes it go full-size. With a final air-tap flourish, the beast then comes to life and rushes towards us. It really did make me feel like a Harry Potter character to make such things happen just by looking, gesturing, and issuing imperious voice commands.

That was my third HoloLens demo, and it’s a damn good job these aren’t for sale in the shops yet, or this would be one heck of an expensive Christmas.

It feels rather strange to be lusting over a Microsoft product like this. They're not supposed to be the cool ones
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Microsoft are looking a lot cooler than Apple right now
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It feels rather strange to be lusting over a Microsoft product like this. But I will actually go out on a limb and risk some serious Twitter flack here by saying that they’re looking a lot cooler than Apple right now.

While the best idea that Apple seems to come up with these days is getting rid of a headphone jack, Microsoft’s Surface book looks good enough that I decided to switch as soon as my MacBook (which has been behaving in a worryingly erratic manner of late) finally gives up the ghost. I’m rather looking forward to it.

In less than two years since announcing it, Microsoft has built a seriously impressive piece of kit
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But that’s nothing compared to the innovation the HoloLens brings. In less than two years since announcing it, Microsoft has built a seriously impressive piece of kit that manages to be cool even though it’s still primarily a corporate tool. Unlike with most VR devices, Gaming and Entertainment only form a very small proportion of its content, and Microsoft’s Director of Product Marketing Leila Martine stressed several times that this is not meant to be a consumer device yet, and that this is only the start of a multi-year journey.

This is only the start of the journey for the HoloLens
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Mixed Reality really kicks VR's butt in a lot of ways
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Which is a shame, because as much as I’m a fan of VR, Mixed Reality really kicks its virtual butt. Unity Labs Lead Designer Timoni West explained one of the reasons for this when we were discussing the reason why most VR experiences don’t last more than a few minutes.

“There are very few experiences in this world that are worth 100% of your time and attention, and I think that’s one of the reasons why VR experiences do tend to be shorter right now. There’s no way to check your phone in VR, it’s very hard to find your drink if you’ve misplaced it, It demands most of your attention, and there is nothing else out there that does that except maybe a new-born child.”

HoloLens is an entirely different proposition: a fully untethered holographic device. This means that everything it needs to operate (basically a fully functional Windows 10 computer) is contained in the headset itself. I cannot stress how impressive that is. No wires, no huge external processing units, just the glasses. And call me a dork if you will, but I actually think they look good.

At the start of my session Colin measured my IPD (Individual Pupillary Distance) which meant there was very little adjustment required before I could start exploring those Mixed Reality experiences. Everything was in focus, my gaze was automatically and accurately tracked, and at no point did I feel even a hint of any discomfort or eyestrain. The same cannot be said for the times I used VR on various devices.

“You tend to forget that over the last 70 thousand years we’ve only had one reality which has been physical, based on atoms, things you can touch,” Says Martine. “It’s only in the last couple of generations really that you started having this digital world of bits and bytes and logic, but those two realities have still been very separate. This is now a really significant moment across the entire spectrum of what we call Mixed Reality.”

It’s interesting that they now seem fully committed to the MR label rather than AR. Martine explains that what they’re doing is not merely augmenting reality – creating something overlays onto a real-world background – nor is it a separate immersive experience like VR. Mixed Reality represents an entire new spectrum of possibilities.

It’s interesting that Microsoft now seem fully committed to the MR label rather than AR
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As cool as it is though, this is about much more than a single device. The hardware is an enabler for Microsoft’s bigger play to become the dominant Mixed Reality platform. At Computex this summer they announced Windows as a holographic platform that would allow anyone who wants to build on this continuum to use it and therefore have the content accessible across any device. Offering a hardware option to go with this is part of that broader strategy, explained Martine:

“The reason why we chose to get involved building first party devices like these is that when you get involved in a category that is emerging you often need to build out as this is something that hasn’t been done before.”

Although they’re focusing on creating new 3D experiences and applications, 2D apps built for regular computers will also run on the HoloLens, as it’s essentially a Windows computer, so that anything that works on a PC – such as Skype, for example, will work with it.

The hardware is an enabler for Microsoft’s bigger play to become the dominant Mixed Reality platform
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Dong Yoon Park from BRDY Studios is one such developer. He adapted his existing iOS app for the HoloLens, turning what was originally a learning and teaching toolkit for typography into a visualisation platform that graphic designers such as himself can use to see how different lettering and fonts would look in 3D environments. This is particularly useful when designing signage, for instance.

This is not just about getting into the hands of tech enthusiasts
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“This is not just about getting into the hands of tech enthusiasts – that’s cool and we want to do it – but this is actually solving hard problems, doing really transformational things that you simply could not have done before. This technology is bringing deep levels of transformation and we’re seeing that in a number of areas.”

This technology is bringing deep levels of transformation and we’re seeing that in a number of areas
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Take building and architecture as an example. An Architect’s job involves constantly translating 3D concepts into 2D blueprints, then into 3D scale models to help clients visualise and sign off on the plans, to eventually become physical buildings. Yet the early partnership between HoloLens and Trimble shows how those concepts can be rendered into full-scale 3D holograms in real time, allowing professionals from all over the world to visualise and share those plans, just as they would look in the real world, making accurate adjustments before they ever break ground and saving enormous amounts of time, energy and money.

When you see these things and you bring them to life, you can learn in an entirely new visual way
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“I always think I could have gone to medical school had it not been for the having to learn through textbooks. When you see these things and you bring them to life, you can learn in an entirely new visual way,” says Leila Martine. After experiencing the demo of the HoloLens anatomy application (a pared-down version of what students at Case Western Reserve University use to do just that, I can certainly see her point.

Microsoft are also working with the NASA Kennedy Space Center
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Microsoft are also working with the NASA Kennedy Space Center on an experience that will be open to the public, as well as applications that will allow for greater collaboration between scientists. Meanwhile, some companies are also starting to roll out consumer trials. DIY retailer Lowe’s – the second largest hardware chain in the US – already offers a service in some of its stores which generates suggestions based on customers’ Pinterest feed. Those customers are then able to select holographic items from Lowe’s catalogue, see how they look in their own home, and interact in real-time with a sales rep who advises them while looking at the same things.

There are two main things which make these experiences work so seamlessly: The first is spatial mapping – the constant scanning of the environment that relays the positioning of objects in the surrounding environment, so the device can accurately and realistically place holograms around them.

The second is persistence, or world-locking. As I place my holograms around a physical environment, they don’t disappear once I remove my headset. If I bring a friend to that room 3 weeks later and she’s wearing a different HoloLens device, she’ll still be able to see the holograms in the exact places I left them.

Another important feature of the HoloLens is spatial sound
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What enables this world locking is the HoloLens’ HPU – Holographic Processing Unit. This, according to Martine, is a significant leap in technology, as current CPUs (Central Processing Units) and GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) were simply not up to the extreme complexity of processing real-time data from a multitude of different camera and infrared depth sensors.

Another important feature of the HoloLens is spatial sound, which emanates from two small red units built in on either side of the headset and is very effective at adding directional audio cues and building a soundscape that makes the holograms come to life. I rather liked the fact that this wasn’t done through headphones, as it ties into the ethos that these experiences are not about shutting out the world around you, only enhancing it.

The HoloLens demos all felt like real products addressing real needs
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Indeed, whereas most VR experiences out there have been pretty fun and/or showed great potential in all sorts of areas, the HoloLens demos all felt like real products addressing real needs, even the one which showcased a luxury watch from an entirely fictitious brand. The objective here was to demonstrate the potential of the technology for sales and marketing, specially in the luxury goods space.

The marketing applications for Mixed Reality are tremendous
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At one point in this experience I was shown a deconstructed view of the internal workings of the watch; I could walk around and look at each part closely as it floated in the space in front of me. Later, when I switched to Presenter Mode on the device, I had access to a heat map tool that showed me exactly which parts of that hologram attracted the most attention.

Where it comes to Mixed Reality, Microsoft shows that it really is Hip to Be Square.
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The marketing implications here are tremendous, as it’s the kind of thing that would eliminate the guesswork in terms of measuring audience engagement. If you can see where your potential customer’s gaze is drawn to and where it lingers the longest – something the HoloLens does automatically as it relies on eye tracking to work – then you can easily fine-tune that content for maximum impact.

As great as the practical stuff was, however, I still spent most of my fake-watch demo time happily gazing at a group of tiny holographic seagulls, flying over a fleet of tiny holographic sailing boats in a holographic ocean contained within that holographic watch. All of which were sitting on top of a perfectly ordinary table – which (weirdly) happened to be made out of real wood.

Considering that this is such an early-stage product, it’s very difficult not to be impressed, and there were only a couple of small niggles I could pick on: While gaze and voice worked seamlessly, the gesture commands took slightly more getting used to. Still, I mostly got it right on the first try, and under the helpful guidance of people like Colin I was able to make the necessary adjustments– such as remembering not to over-extend my arm or keep all but two fingers folded down as I did the quick air-tap motion that works as the equivalent of a mouse click. I can see how, as motion tracking technology improves, you will be able to use increasingly natural gestures to shape the world around you, and I’m really looking forward to doing some more flamboyant holographic spell-casting.

The HoloLens manages to be at once utterly practical, incredibly fun and more than a little bit sexy
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The other issue is that your holographic Field of View (FOV) is not wrap-around, but restricted to a rectangular area in front of your eye, which means that for larger holograms you have to move your head up and down to get the full picture, which breaks immersion slightly. That, however, feels very much like a bridging compromise in favour of texture and quality. I have a feeling that an expanded FOV will be on the cards for later iterations

The HoloLens manages to be at once utterly practical, incredibly fun and more than a little bit sexy, so my  My biggest niggle with it is simply that I can’t have one just yet.

And since I started this post with a 60’s song reference (those who failed to pick up on that should seriously brush up on Janis Joplin classics ) so I’ll finish with an 80s one: Where it comes to Mixed Reality, Microsoft shows that it really is Hip to Be Square.

Microsoft started shipping the HoloLens developer suite and commercial edition to the US and Canada back in March, and last week they opened pre-orders in the UK, France Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, which are expected to start getting their kits by the end of November.

The post Oh Lord, Won’t you Buy me a HoloLens? appeared first on Tecntrend.

Technology can help drive innovation, but the businesses model of the future needs to be built around diversity.

It’s all too easy to get discouraged when, year after year, reports come out showing that the gender pay gap lingers around like a bad smell (average of 18% difference as of 2016 according to the IFS)

Then you turn to our most innovative industries, such as tech: There you find that 96% of VCs are men, that they only invest 8% of their money on companies Co-founded by women, and discouragement starts turning to despair.

96% of VCs are men, and that they only invest 8% of their money on companies Co-founded by women
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But then someone like Cindy Gallop comes along, painting a picture of the future that’s as hopeful as it is kick-ass, and you walk away knowing that things will change – mainly because the status quo is just bad business, and it’s eating away not only at our happiness, but at our profits. And as she told a rapt audience at FutureFest last weekend – repurposing an infamous anti-gun control quote – “The only thing that can really stop someone with a bad business is someone with a better business.”

The only thing that can really stop someone with a bad business is someone with a better business.
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If you want to design the business of the future, it absolutely has to be gender equal, simply because that is what drives innovation, explains Cindy. Disruption and innovation come as a result of a creative collision between different mindsets, perspectives, backgrounds and insights.

 

“Women are crucial to the future of work and business because there is a huge amount of money to be made out of taking women seriously. They’re a key part of redesigning the business of the future because you cannot drive new-world-order business from an old-world-order place.”

That new world order requires diversity across race, ethnicity, sexuality, disability and age, but gender cuts across all those things according to Cindy. Women are very good at challenging the status quo because they are never it.

“At the top of every industry is a closed loop of white guys talking to white guys about other white guys. And white guys, you will enormously benefit when you break that loop. Because if you start any business today with an all-male-white founding team you will never own the future, if you run any business today with an all-white-male leadership team, you will never own the future. If you want to be the business of the future and you want to make a shit-ton of money doing it, that future is gender-equal and diverse.”

And there are many white guys out there who couldn’t agree more. Journalist and trend forecaster James Wallman recently worked with Yell Business on a report looking at the future of gender equality, and says that although women have been shockingly underrepresented in business in government and in the media, we’re definitely headed towards a more female future,and that’s a very good thing for everybody.

Smart companies like Apple, Etsy, Slack are bringing women into the design and creation process
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We’re headed towards a more female future,and that’s a very good thing for everybody
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“Smart companies like Apple, Etsy, Slack are bringing women into the design and creation process and that’s creating better products, better services, for men, women, for all of us.”

He acknowledges that there are still significant numbers of men who see feminism as an antagonistic movement, perceiving it as a win-lose game between men and women.

 

“That’s nonsense,” says Wallman. “If women do better, men will benefit, and I think we’re going to see a movement emerging – which I call Masculism – that shows those men how equality is good for all of us.”

There are some interesting ways in which technology can help us get to that diverse and equal future too, and one of the most exciting ones is around Virtual Reality. In virtual worlds we’re able to play with different identities and even bypass the issue of gender altogether. Wallman points to the fact that we’ll see a greater variety of gender categories emerging, with people feeling comfortable defining themselves as Pangender, Agender or Polygender, for example.

At the top of every industry is a closed loop of white guys talking to white guys about other white guys
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As we conduct more of our personal and professional interactions in virtual worlds mediated by Avatars which we’re free to shape as we please, the possibilities for bypassing unconscious gender bias are tantalizing, says Wired’s Rowland Manthorpe:

“As we live more in virtual worlds — whether in AR or VR — it will be possible to deflect and undermine strict gender divisions. You might be a woman in the flesh but a man through the AR lens. In the future, our workplaces will be far less affected by our inbuilt biases, the people we hire and work with will be more diverse, and the results will be better because of it.”

Jim Reichert, a Senior Creative Technologist at Microsoft working on HoloLens Augmented Reality projects, is another white guy who passionately champions diversity. He tells me that this sort of gender transcendence is already prevalent evident in Second Life, the original virtual world created by Linden Lab over 13 years ago, and that this is also reflected in the fact that over 60% of creators in that environment are women, significantly higher than in other areas of tech.

“I’ve met so many amazing people in the Metaverse– really brilliant people– and I have no idea what their sex, ethnicity, or country-of-origin is. It’s pretty cool,” he says.

Linden Lab is now is now developing a VR version of this social open-world called Sansar, and when I recently demoed their closed Beta I had some clue that enabling this sort of flexibility is a key part of their design. I met Linden’s CEO Ebbe Altberg in the virtual world, and after a short while it didn’t’ really seem strange at all that his deep male voice was emanating from the lips of a female avatar, dressed in a bright green Godzilla suit. “I don’t even notice it any more,” he told me.

A more diverse workplace will be a much happier one, and that makes good business sense
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There’s a lot at stake here. A more diverse workplace will be a much happier one, and that makes good business sense, since happier people are much more productive, and A LOT more creative.

“As we move from materialism to experientialism, we’re going to look for happiness and identity in experiences rather than just stuff, and what’s going to matter is quality of life,” predicts Wallman.

It’s up to us to make it happen though, and grab life and business by the balls, so to speak. Cindy recommends everybody to take time to identify what their values are. What do you most love doing? And under what conditions do you most love doing it?

“Everything in life and business starts with your values. Design an opportunity, a job, a venture around those values, and it will never feel like work. When you do that you can make your own business model. I did with my venture Make Love Not Porn because I believe the business model of the future is shared value+shared actions=shared profit, both financial and social.”

And that sounds like something that would well and truly “make the world a better place” – a rare occasion when we can deliver the Silicon Valley punch line with a straight face.

The post Designing a Workplace Beyond Gender appeared first on Tecntrend.

In this article I take a look at a bold experiment which takes 360-video footage shot in Second Life (the massive virtual environment created by Linden Lab) and projects it in real-time onto Microsoft’s Hololens. This shows the amazing possibilities that are opening up for user-generated content in the VR arena, and for seamlessly blending the real and virtual worlds.

Read the full article on UploadVR

You need to see the @HoloLens project a 360-video into the “real world”.
via @alicebonasio @LindenLab @SecondLife https://t.co/Z7Fx01Lre4

— Upload (@UploadVR) August 17, 2016

The post Mixing Realities: AR+VR+SL+RL=Awesome appeared first on Tecntrend.

With Virtual reality fast becoming mainstream there’s huge demand for creative content showcasing the technology. VR is an entirely new medium, however, with rules of its own that need to be discovered, tested and codified before we really experience its full glory.

The National Theatre in London started pioneering VR content production in 2015 with its fabulous wonder.land experience based on the musical inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (albeit with a distinctively modern twist).

VR is an entirely new storytelling medium
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I talked to the NT’s Head of Digital Development Toby Coffey about that project a few months ago, back when wonder.land had been selected for the first ever VR selection at Cannes. He told me that in spite of how the project had been done on a tight schedule and relatively low budget, it received overwhelmingly positive responses from the public, with over 90,000 taking part in the experience. This was clearly a rabbit hole worth exploring.

Over 90,000 so far watched the National Theatre's wonder.land VR experience
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Which is how, on an extremely rainy British summer afternoon, I find myself in a modest room full of intriguing props and VR gear, in London’s traditionally arty South Bank district. My Virtual tour starts with revisiting wonder.land. It’s a different experience from the first one, where I had used the Samsung Gear headset while sat in Toby’s office.

This time around, I sat on a toilet seat and used the Oculus, which afforded much sharper resolution and heightened interactivity due to its motion-tracking feature. For a few minutes I’m serenaded by an elusive Cheshire cat in a colourful psychedelic world. And if you’re wondering why one would do this sitting on a fake toilet cubicle, it ties in with the plot of the musical where Alice is a modern teenage girl being bullied at school. She locks herself in the school toilet in order to escape to an alternative reality – through her mobile phone. The Internet, as Toby tells me, is Alice’s own wonderland.

The Internet is Alice's Wonderland
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Next up is HOME/AAMIR, a film directed by Coffey himself, which transports the viewer to the Calais Jungle refugee camp, in all its visceral squalor. This is a longer, slower-paced, deliberately uncomfortable experience, where you have time to look around various shacks and makeshift streets of the encampment guided by the narration of a Sudanese refugee. At one point, as Aamir recounts the terror of making the crossing in a “plastic boat” there is no footage, just darkness and the ominous sound of waves. Later, you huddle with a group of refugees hiding inside a container hoping to make the crossing to England undetected. You can only see their eyes, by the dim light of a mobile phone.

You experience what it's like for a refugee hiding in a container hoping to make it across to England
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As with a lot of 360 video, the experience is sometimes a bit jarring, but it definitely showcases the potential of the medium to create a heightened sense of empathy. The fact that I can focus on random details such as a tattered piece of tarpaulin fluttering in the breeze or the open door of a filthy portaloo as it swings backwards and forwards makes it feel a lot more real, and I’m therefore much more able to imagine the horror of what it is to live that existence.

It’s all quite intense, so while I’m waiting for my turn at the next experience – which centres around the Easter Rising in Ireland – I allow myself a quick pit-stop to decompress. There’s a HTC Vive setup in one corner and I’ve been meaning to try Google’s Tilt Brush for ages. Sometimes high expectations lead to disappointment, especially with such cutting-edge technology. Not so this time.

They practically had to drag me away from what felt like the world’s best playground. Tilt Brush is a simple idea, brilliantly executed. In a nutshell you can use all your familiar digital design tools to paint in the 3D space around you. The textures, light, shadows and objects feel incredibly real and there is something utterly satisfying in messing about with those materials and colours. And before the technophobe crowd starts shouting foul about “what’s wrong with grabbing a box of paint and some brushes”, let me say that it’s an entirely different kettle of fish. It doesn’t replace other art forms, it creates an entirely new one. You cannot paint the air around you in real life, but with VR all your surroundings become a malleable canvas. You literally feel your mind and creativity expanding as you use it, and reassess what is and isn’t possible.

With Google's Tilt Brush, the whole world around you becomes a creative canvas
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After reluctantly leaving my masterpieces behind, it’s time to experience Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel, which was produced by BBC Learning, Crossover Labs and VRTOV. I sit at an old-fashioned desk installation and put on the Oculus (motion tracking is a key part of how the interactive narrative unfolds) to enter a highly stylized world which lets the user live the events of 1916 through the memories of one of its protagonists, Willie McNeive.

One of the most interesting things about VR is that immersion really is not dependent on what you would normally associate with “realism”. Photorealistic, sharp experiences can feel a lot more disconnected than ones using basic, cartoon-like characters. So even though Voice of a Rebel is in no way set in a “realistic” environment, the interactive triggers set in the story make me feel more invested in it than would have been possible through sound or video alone.

Interactive triggers make me feel more invested in the story than sound or video alone
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The National Theatre is looking to bring this experience to the public from early September as a free installation in the Lyttelton Lounge, and there are plans for production and research collaborations between the Immersive Storytelling Studio and the National Film Board of Canada. They also tell me that future projects at the studio will explore hardware such as PlayStationVR (due out later this year) and Mixed Reality gear such as Microsoft HoloLens. Watch this space!

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