[The VR company Parallux has created a new type of shared presence experience for audiences, as reported in this story from Techradar. See the original story for more pictures, and for more information see the NYU news release and an interview in No Proscenium. The Hollywood Reporter has a rundown of the VR-AR programming at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. –Matthew]

Are shared experiences the future of virtual reality?

By Catherine Ellis
April 23, 2019

VR is traditionally a lonely experience. After slipping on a headset, you’re typically isolated (even if you’re sitting in a group), and even multi-person experiences only let two or three people share the same world. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

From April 26 to May 4 at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, virtual reality company Parallux is premiering a new experience that 16 people can watch and enjoy together. The experience, Cave, is a tale set 12,000 years ago when stories were told around fires, harking back to the earliest days of shared storytelling.

“When people will show up at Tribeca, they’ll enter the VR arcade, and our experience cave will be in a separate room there,” explains Sebastian Herscher, CEO of Parallux. “There are going to be 16 headsets on 16 seats, set up in two rows. They’re going to walk in, be asked to sit down and relax, and be introduced to the equipment that we’re using, just as a little bit of onboarding.

“Then they’re going to put on their headset, and the moment that they put it on they are going to be transported to the world space of Cave.”

When a member of the audience looks left or right, they’ll be able to see virtual representations of the people sitting either side of them. These won’t just be placeholders, either – each avatar will follow the movements of the person it represents, turning its head in the same direction and ‘looking’ wherever he or she does.

“On top of that, every seat has a unique viewpoint, like a theater,” Herscher says. “So the person on the left side of the audience is having a very different experience and a different viewpoint than a person on the right side of the audience. They are then going to sit back watch our short, and then take off the headset and mosey on out just like a theater or a movie.” Read more on Parallux’s “Cave” at Tribeca: Are collective shared experiences the future of virtual reality?…

[In addition to describing new research on the use of presence to treat a specific symptom of depression, this story from STAT provides a link-rich summary of its use in other aspects of mental health care. –Matthew]

Can virtual reality boost positive feelings in patients with depression?

By Megan Thielking
April 22, 2019

Michelle Craske is asking patients to dive into coral reefs, ride on bullet trains rushing past pine trees, and cheer on soccer teams from the stands — at least virtually — in a bid to tackle a symptom long sidelined in depression treatment.

The University of California, Los Angeles, psychiatry researcher and her colleagues are testing whether virtual reality can curb anhedonia, a symptom of depression and other serious mental health conditions that’s marked by a lack of interest or ability to feel pleasure. They’re putting patients into pleasant scenarios — like a stroll through a sun-soaked forest while piano music plays — and coaching them to pay close attention to the positive parts. The idea is to help patients learn to plan positive activities, take part in them, and soak up the good feelings in the process.

It’s an unconventional strategy — not just for its use of virtual reality, but also for how it approaches a patient’s symptoms. Treatments for depression and other serious mental health conditions primarily target negative symptoms, like hopelessness, sadness, and anxiety — but they often don’t help with the lack of positive feelings that some patients experience.

“Most treatments, up until now, have done an OK job at reducing negative [symptoms of depression], but a very poor job at helping patients become more positive,” said Craske.

There aren’t data yet to determine whether virtual reality treatment can make a meaningful difference in anhedonia. But the technology is increasingly popular in mental health care. Other studies have suggested virtual reality can be useful in easing certain phobias, helping people with psychotic disorders experience less paranoia and anxiety in public settings, and reducing social anxiety.

“It goes to the heart of the very best of psychological therapy — going into environments that cause difficulties and learning different ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving,” said Dr. Daniel Freeman, a University of Oxford psychologist who is studying whether it’s possible to use virtual reality to automate therapy for certain conditions, such as a fear of heights. Researchers elsewhere are using virtual reality for everything from treating PTSD in people who’ve experienced sexual trauma to equipping service members with coping skills they’ll need in combat zones.

“Mental health and the environment are inseparable,” said Freeman. “The brilliant thing about virtual reality is that you can provide simulations in the environment and have people repeatedly go into them,” he added. Read more on Treating anhedonia: Using VR and presence to boost positive feelings in patients with depression…

[This story from The A.V. Club nicely captures some of the challenges of creating compelling presence experiences using virtual reality. The original story includes the trailer video for “Spheres: Songs Of Spacetime”; for more information about “Spheres” see UniFrance and for more on “Dinner Party” see that film’s website.  –Matthew]

[Image: Robert Rodriguez’s The Limit. Credit: STX Financing, LLC.]

A Robert Rodriguez virtual-reality film captures the push and pull between VR’s past and future

Alex McLevy
April 18, 2019

Unless your name is James Cameron, you’re probably a little skeptical of the recent surge in virtual reality as a medium for storytelling. (And even he wants you to know that what we tend to call “VR” isn’t true VR to Hollywood’s biggest devotee of technological advancements.) For most people, it’s still a limited platform, both cost- and access-wise; the forms of available VR platforms (Oculus, Steam, Vive, Google Play, PS4, etc.) are growing, but the amount of content waiting to greet those who pony up the hundreds of dollars for the necessary equipment isn’t yet commensurate with the investment. The richest source of entertainment in VR, unsurprisingly, is gaming, where the immersive environment is more useful as both a tool and aesthetic enhancement. Games like Superhot and Moss showcase the best the technology has to offer, making the player’s broad control of perspective an essential aspect of the experience.

But when it comes to cinematic narrative alone, harnessing VR’s potential becomes more challenging. It’s not simply that a large portion of a director’s skill lies in guiding the eyes of the viewer exactly where they’d like them to be, and facilitating the transition from one sight to the next at a pace—and in an order—meant to maximize emotional impact, or illuminate a certain element of the frame for tactical purposes. There’s also the fact that almost no one seems to have figured out how to shoot a VR movie in a way that would compensate for the option to move your head and disrupt even the most rudimentary of compositions—essentially throwing the meticulous art of cinematography out the viewer-controlled window.

As a result, a number of creators of VR stories are splitting the difference between filmmaking and games, essentially turning their short-film experiences into more of a theme-park ride than a piece of cinema. The latest and clearest example of this sort of breezy, cheap-seats entertainment is Robert Rodriguez’s The Limit, a 20-minute virtual reality action spectacle that slams the viewer into an adrenaline-fueled race through three major set pieces in service of a simple sci-fi conceit. The viewer assumes the point of view of a mysterious agent imbued with some unknown cybernetic enhancements, who makes contact with an assassin (Michelle Rodriguez) similarly gifted with digital upgrades. The mission: to fight back against the organization that created your character, and is now trying to shut its experiment down. Read more on Robert Rodriguez’ “The Limit” captures the push and pull between VR’s past and future…

[A computer scientist and a biologist are using presence to teach users about insects and environmental conservation; some of the details are in this press release from EurekAlert!. More information is in their article in Rethinking Ecology, and see the project’s Patreon page for a 2:21 minute video (also available via YouTube; an earlier 1:30 minute YouTube video is also available). –Matthew]

Living room conservation: Gaming & virtual reality for insect and ecosystem conservation

Players explore and search for butterflies using knowledge gained through gameplay

News Release 18-Apr-2019
Pensoft Publishers

Gaming and virtual reality (VR) could bridge the gap between urban societies and nature, thereby paving the way to insect conservation by the means of education, curiosity and life-like participation.

This is what Florida International University‘s team of computer scientist Alban Delamarre and biologist Dr Jaeson Clayborn strive to achieve by developing a VR game (desktop version also available) dedicated to insect and plant species. Focused on imperiled butterflies, their innovative idea: Butterfly World 1.0, is described in the open-access journal Rethinking Ecology.

Butterfly World 1.0 is an adventure game designed to engage its users in simulated exploration and education. Set in the subtropical dry forest of the Florida Keys (an archipelago situated off the southern coast of Florida, USA), Butterfly World draws the players into an immersive virtual environment where they learn about relationships between butterflies, plants, and invasive species. While exploring the set, they interact with and learn about the federally endangered Schaus’ swallowtail butterfly, the invasive graceful twig ant, native and exotic plants, and several other butterflies inhabiting the dry forest ecosystem. Other nature-related VR experiences, including conservation awareness and educational programs, rely on passive observations with minimal direct interactions between participants and the virtual environment.

According to the authors, virtual reality and serious gaming are “the new frontiers in environmental education” and “present a unique opportunity to interact with and learn about different species and ecosystems”. Read more on Butterfly World: Gaming and VR for insect and ecosystem conservation…

[As this report from the TED2019 blog makes clear, immersive platforms that don’t rely on isolating headsets have important advantages in the creation of (social) presence experiences. The original story includes more images and  for more information Axios has a concise summary, GeekWire has a detailed story about a new interactive, haptic-enhanced game for the Holodome as well as an earlier report on the platform’s debut in Seattle, and a 1:00 minute video that includes viewer reactions is available via YouTube. –Matthew]

[Image: Step up close to, and almost into, the work of Monet, a favorite artist of Vulcan founder Paul Allen. Vulcan brought their new Holodome environment to TED2019: Bigger Than Us, in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Credit: Bret Hartman / TED.]

Vulcan Holodome at TED2019: An immersive 360-degree world… without a headset?

Posted by: TED Staff
April 17, 2019

Have you ever loved a painting so much you wanted to step inside it? While the world of VR is usually utilised to take us to inaccessible locations like the depths of the ocean or the surface of the Moon, Vulcan’s Holodome offers the opportunity to enter the world of an impressionist painting in one of two experiences previewing at TED2019.

Unlike the usual headset-based VR experience, the Holodome is a fully immersive environment you can explore with your fellow adventurers, unhindered by wearable equipment. Inspired by a love of Monet’s works, the late chair of Vulcan, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, wanted to create a way to step inside them. One where you can walk across the painter’s Poppy Field as it undulates around and beneath you, and Woman with a Parasol disappears over a nearby rise.

“With Holodome, our goal is to transport people into immersive adventures across real and imagined worlds, from the highest mountaintop to an impressionist landscape to the boundaries of space, without the need for mounted headgear,” says Kamal Srinivasan, Vulcan’s director of product management. Read more on Vulcan Holodome at TED2019: An immersive 360-degree world… without a headset?…