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Video: How Do You Define VR and AR Video?

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Tim Siglin: VR video doesn't have to be in a 360 format. Do you all agree it's essentially anything where you're merging, say 3D, with live action, or how do you all define VR video, ignoring the 360 portion of it?

Devon Copley: VR and AR are consumption modalities. They're at the end of the pipeline, and you can consume a variety of different content using a VR or an AR headset, and content that's created for one use case is often usable in another use case as well. 360 video is a kind of content that can be consumed in a VR headset and can be consumed on a device, and can be consumed on an AR headset. Actually, Microsoft's HoloLens has an app called HoloTour on it, which was created at great expense, which is really one of the best 360 video experiences I've ever seen, but you can only get it on HoloLens, and they put a couple objects close to you that are Unity-style 3D boxes to make you feel like it's just a 360 video, and it's really well done, so it's confusing and it's confusing to everybody because people use the words very differently, but I think one thing that's useful, I think, is to recognize that VR and AR are consumption modalities. That's all they are.

Mark Alamares: There's different layers or different levels, and the key term is immersion, as they would say, because VR is much more immersive because most of the time, it's going to be, you'll be engaging in a virtual world, so to speak, and then AR is going to be mixing reality with virtual objects and humans and so forth, so again, we're at that point where all that's being worked out.

Tim Siglin: So is it Second Life come to life again?

Mark Alamares: That's a possibility on the VR side, so yeah, but going back to 360 video, there's a lot of debate whether or not if that's true VR, and so I would say it's just using the equipment to view VR as well.

Tim Siglin: And I don't think anybody would argue that it's not immersive, but is it virtual?

Mark Alamares: Yeah, would it be virtual, I would say.

Tim Siglin:            VR video doesn't have to be in a 360 format. Do you all agree it's essentially anything where you're merging, say 3D, with live action, or how do you all define VR video, ignoring the 360 portion of it?

 

Devon Copley:   VR and AR are consumption modalities. They're at the end of the pipeline, and you can consume a variety of different content using a VR or an AR headset, and content that's created for one use case is often usable in another use case as well. 360 video is a kind of content that can be consumed in a VR headset and can be consumed on a device, and can be consumed on an AR headset. Actually, Microsoft's HoloLens has an app called HoloTour on it, which was created at great expense, which is really one of the best 360 video experiences I've ever seen, but you can only get it on HoloLens, and they put a couple objects close to you that are Unity-style 3D boxes to make you feel like it's just a 360 video, and it's really well done, so it's confusing and it's confusing to everybody because people use the words very differently, but I think one thing that's useful, I think, is to recognize that VR and AR are consumption modalities. That's all they are.

 

Mark Alamares: There's different layers or different levels, and the key term is immersion, as they would say, because VR is much more immersive because most of the time, it's going to be, you'll be engaging in a virtual world, so to speak, and then AR is going to be mixing reality with virtual objects and humans and so forth, so again, we're at that point where all that's being worked out.

 

Tim Siglin:            So is it Second Life come to life again?

 

Mark Alamares: That's a possibility on the VR side, so yeah, but going back to 360 video, there's a lot of debate whether or not if that's true VR, and so I would say it's just using the equipment to view VR as well.

 

Tim Siglin:            And I don't think anybody would argue that it's not immersive, but is it virtual?

 

Mark Alamares: Yeah, would it be virtual, I would say. 

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