Ronen Tanchum is the head of The Artery VFX's newly launched Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) division. The studio is based in New York City (www.thearteryvfx.com). Here, he looks at the state of VR.
What do we see coming?
VR content will become non linear. The virtual reality platform is evolving towards more game-like, interactive experiences where users are engaged and involved with the content. As the technology advances, the opportunity for rich, narrative experiences becomes more and more achievable.
New capture technologies are emerging — beyond traditional cameras or 360 spherical-format capture. Depth and 3D scans will become more relevant for both virtual and augmented reality to enable users the ability to interact with environments, characters and action.
The use of such technologies will also become more apparent in interactive ads, music videos and short films and will inspire significant development of integrated creative apps such as drawing, composing music, mixing and mastering binaural audio.
How are we adjusting our business with new services and gear?
Much like the social media revolution to media and the business of branding, VR and AR will change the way we interact with content, data, and other forms of dialogue. I see this technology shrinking the gap of location on our planet by live streaming lectures, events and promotional content via the platform, enabling billions of people to be virtually present in their content, regardless of physical location.
The tools we’re utilizing now will continue to evolve to facilitate how brands reach their customers, globally.
What will clients be asking for?
Clients are still looking for ways to utilize these tools — to understand how to best engage their customers with compelling brand experiences. They will be looking for platforms to share their ideas and capabilities and how to best create unique VR and AR experiences.
What will be the production and post production challenges?
We’re no longer looking at one side of the story…that means when we create these experiences we need to understand how to exploit the much wider and opportunistic pipeline — there are multiple ways to create the story…production needs to be well aware of the available technologies and the challenges in utilizing the most appropriate for the story.
Additionally, handling the vast amounts of data, pushing the limits of hardware, developing software and pushing towards realtime processing will be some of the most difficult challenges we’ll face…much like the challenges in today’s game industry to create the most exhilarating and never-before experienced visual content. The coming platforms will be much more demanding with regard to data-processing and capturing, and technologies will be forced to evolve quickly to deliver these kinds of experiences.