i-illusions via Polygon
What’s the best way to show off what it feels like to be in virtual reality? It’s an open question with no single right answer, at least not yet, and the best solution used to be something called mixed reality.
This is the process in which someone goes into virtual reality and is shot with a camera attached to a motion controller. Software then places the video image of the player into the game world. A recent sketch on Conan O’Brien showed used this technique perfectly.
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“There are two other techniques we used too. We attached a camera to the drones in-game to get some cool sweeping moves for ‘free’ without having to manually move the camera, and moving the camera manually with an Xbox controller,” Gartner said. “There’s a few of those wide shots peppered in the trailer and I think they really help sell the scope and scale of the environment you’re in and give a different perspective on the action.”
Those amazing shots that would require some tricky programming or impossible physical movements on the part of the camera person you see in the trailer? All they did was strap a virtual camera to an in-game enemy and shoot things from its point of view. This is on example of what that looks like in action. The team also had to get creative with some of the camera angles, and would sometimes have the performer themselves hold the “camera” to simulate an over-the-shoulder effect.
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Compare that to the mixed reality demo O’Brien shot at YouTube’s offices, which required a much larger team and a full room dedicated to the green screen:
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Gartner has a few more details on his official blog post about the trailers, if you feel like taking a deeper dive into how they were put together and why shooting VR in strictly first-person views is so limiting. These are the early days of shooting what amount to short films in VR, and it’s only going to get better from here.
Space Pirate Trainer is available now on Steam and tomorrow through Oculus Home.
Source: Polygon