Virtual Reality Movies Aren't Far Off

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If you’re tired of watching movies on boring ol’ screens, the virtual reality gurus at Oculus have news for you. As reported by Bryan Bishop at The Verge, the company has unveiled Oculus Story Studio to develop VR cinema. And its first movie is set to debut this week at Sundance.

“Called Lost, the project is a real-time computer generated VR experience for the Crescent Bay prototype, and is directed by Saschka Unseld, a former Pixar animator who created the 2013 short The Blue Umbrella. Lost runs roughly five minutes in length, but in what Unseld touts as one of the project’s innovations, it changes the pace of its storytelling based on the action taken by the viewer. ‘It could be three-and-a-half minutes and it could be 10,’ he says. ‘It all depends on you.'”

Bishop explains how VR has been the talk of the town this year in Park City. Much like a video game company peddling a new console will try to attract third-party developers, Oculus is showing off its Rift device hoping to attract some major movie studio attention. Lost is, in and of itself, an artistic showcase for the fledgling Oculus movie-making corps. It’s also a showcase of the Rift’s potential as the next great vehicle for visual storytelling. I suppose we’ll see.