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Start-up Mindshow is creating a virtual-reality app that lets you create your own animated movies in VR, with the app handling the heavy-lifting of making the characters, sets and props for you. | Mindshow
I created my own virtual-reality cartoon, and the only skill required was my willingness to look ridiculous.
My clip, in which I play both a hollering alien and the space captain he threatens, was the product of Mindshow, an app from Los Angeles startup Visionary VR.
Think of the app as if Pixar jumped into VR and fused Minecraft with music-mixing software GarageBand. The app features a library of animated characters, props and settings for you to inhabit and edit into a sharable clip. And it all feels like playtime.
After initially figuring out how to combine virtual reality and narrative, Visionary VR decided to open things up.
“There is a greater opportunity than enabling our own ability to tell stories,” CEO Gil Baron said. “It’s enabling everyone else to.”
Mindshow is the purest example of the latest undercurrent in VR storytelling: how to give you a bigger role to play. It’s the latest pitch for the medium, which uses screens in motion-sensitive headsets to throw viewers into wild digital worlds. With the likes of Facebook and Google backing it, VR has been hailed as the next big thing.
In fact, 2016 was supposed to be a splashy year for VR. Last year marked the launch of three high-profile systems: the Oculus Rift from Facebook, the Vive from phone maker HTC and video game developer and distributor Valve, and the Playstation VR from Sony. Meanwhile, Samsung said early this year that it had shipped 5 million Gear VR headsets since their late 2015 launch. But the reality check is that the release of hardware alone isn’t enough to sustain hype, and critics argue that insufficient content crimps VR’s appeal.
So creators working on narrative VR — and the companies that fund them — have started to ask themselves how they can put VR storytelling into people’s hands.
Mindshow, which was on display last month at the Consumer Electronics Show and at the Sundance Film Festival, literally puts you in control of the story. With the Vive’s hand controllers and headset, you perform any story you invent, whether you play a tuxedo-wearing puppy or anthropomorphic Twinkie.
Others making VR movies have also started to dip their toes in interactivity, giving viewers more agency over the telling of a tale. And the deep-pocketed companies making VR hardware are shoveling money and tech tools to more people, hoping to turn diverse filmmakers and regular folks like you and me into VR creators too.
Tech giants
Facebook placed its bet on VR three years ago with its $3 billion purchase of headset-developer Oculus, but the company didn’t turn off the funding spigot once it had the hardware. In October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook had invested $250 million in virtual-reality content and pledged another $250 million, plus $10 million each for educational and diversity programs in VR.
Many of those funds are earmarked for bringing people into VR who otherwise might not initially show interest.
One of the diversity efforts is VR for Good, which matches a nonprofit with a filmmaker to collaborate with Oculus on virtual-reality movies. Along with Launch Pad, the company’s effort to encourage filmmakers to address social issues using VR, Oculus has been widening the net so a greater variety of people can take advantage of the medium.
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Source: CNET