Hi! I’m videogame composer Winifred Phillips, and today let’s spend a little time discussing the allure of composing music for virtual reality. There are a lot of reasons why we video game composers might be excited about creating music for VR games. The technology of immersive virtual experiences has the potential to offer an intensity of emotional involvement transcending most other forms of entertainment. What game music composer wouldn’t be inspired by that? However, it’s tough to be inspired by something we may not have experienced yet.
Becoming a VR gamer can be a fantastic rush, but the financial barriers to entry can be pretty high. The top VR headsets and gear require a VR-ready computer, and purchasing the computer and the VR hardware together can easily exceed two thousand dollars. While there are lower-cost VR options (such as headsets designed to work with mobile phones), the virtual experience provided by these economical VR systems can offer only a fraction of the spectacle delivered by the high-end models. If we want to take our first steps into a dazzling virtual world, but we don’t have a bucket of cash on hand, what do we do?
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An excellent solution comes in the form of the Virtual Reality Arcade. Knowing that average consumers may not have the funds to gear up with the best VR tech, forward-thinking entrepreneurs have created indoor virtual amusement parks where aspiring VR gamers can go to play. Stocked up with all the very best in VR technology, these arcades offer adventures in virtual worlds for a price that ranges from the equivalent of a movie ticket to the price of a dinner and drinks at a mid-range restaurant.
Until high-end VR becomes more affordable, the VR Arcade is the best (and only) way for budget-conscious consumers to experience VR games. Happily, this also provides game composers with a chance to experience full-fledged VR without making a sizable financial investment. For those of us wondering if VR might constitute an awesome new career path, a VR arcade can be a great place to try it out.
There are hundreds of VR arcades in America and around the world, so all it takes is a quick search on Google Maps to find one near you (or you can just click this link and the search results will pop up right away). Below, I’ve included information about four companies with multiple locations and big ambitions in the VR arcade business.
Survios
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Some of us may be familiar with Survios as the game developer responsible for such VR hits as Raw Data, Sprint Vector, andElectronauts. Formed by graduates of University of Southern California’s Mixed Reality Lab, Survios is backed by $50 million dollars worth of venture capital from investors that include Lux Capital and Metro-Goldwin-Mayer Studios.
In addition to their internal game development, Survios has embraced the VR arcade business model, developing a distribution network that supplies VR games to hundreds of VR arcades across 36 countries. In this capacity, Survios has provided a channelthrough which other VR developers can make their games available in VR arcades around the world.
To top it all off, Survios operates its own special retail VR arcade location in Torrence California, where it tests out new games and new strategies in VR arcade design. This includes their special Tesseract play-space, which is essentially a spacious booth with a rear projection screen for showing the VR action to spectators who can easily watch both the player and the screen through specially-designed glass walls.
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Here’s a video of the Survios Arcade launch party that took place in February 2018:
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IMAX VR Experience
We’re all probably familiar with IMAX as the company responsible for bringing us a movie format capable of projecting at a very high resolution onto gigantic screens in specially-designed theaters that move the audience as close to the on-screen action as possible. Since IMAX’s focus has always been filmmaking, when they began experimenting with incorporating VR into their business, they approached it from a filmmaker’s point of view.
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In November of 2016, the company secured $50 million dollars of venture capital so that they could finance 25 exclusive VR “experiences” that would only be available through IMAX. Their plans are to roll out these projects over the next 3 years. The projects will feature prominent filmmakers such as Justin Lin (Fast & Furious 6, Star Trek Beyond) and The Russo brothers (Avengers: Infinity War, Captain America: Civil War). They’ve also partnered with Warner Bros. to co-finance and produce 3 VR projects based on Warner Bros. tentpole franchises. Finally, IMAX has always been a film technology company, so their VR efforts also include the development of a new “cinema-grade VR camera” for their virtual reality projects. Partnering with Google has enabled IMAX to develop this new VR camera technology, which is expected to launch in 2018.
All of these efforts have informed the approach IMAX is taking in bringing VR to its IMAX theater audiences. In February 2017, IMAX launched its first dedicated “IMAX VR Center,” located right across the street from the massively popular shopping complex The Grove. In the first three months, the location saw 20,000 unique visitors and great revenues.
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Buoyed up by this early success, IMAX launched five additional VR centers – two in New York, and three additional locations in Toronto, Manchester and Shanghai. While none of the other VR centers have performed as well as the Los Angeles flagship location, this hasn’t dimmed IMAX’s enthusiasm for the future of VR. The IMAX VR centers feature HTC Vive and StarVR headsets, with haptic feedback vests to make each VR adventure feel more real. IMAX is even experimenting with adding smell to their VR offerings in order to deepen immersion. Also, like the Tesseract model employed by the Survios VR arcade, the IMAX VR centers allow players to enjoy their virtual adventures while their companions watch. This is achieved, not by a Tesseract-style glass enclosure, but by virtue of the low walls surrounding each VR play-space.
Here’s a video that takes us inside the flagship IMAX VR Center in Los Angeles:
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Conclusion
VR is a promising new medium, offering great opportunities for artistic expression for video game composers. If you haven’t had a chance to try VR yet, and you don’t want to make a hefty purchase to obtain a high-end VR system, you can check here to find your local VR arcade and give virtual reality a try. Lots of ambitious development teams are entering the world of VR, and certainly we’d be remiss if we didn’t consider VR as a possible avenue for our work as game music composers!
Source: Gamasutra