Over the past 2 years 大象传媒 R&D, in association with our colleagues elsewhere in the 大象传媒, has been looking at the production process, technology, costs and measurement of creating compelling content with Virtual Reality. These projects have been written about extensively by our colleagues and .
We鈥檝e shared our learnings on , , and amongst many other areas.
Today we鈥檇 like to talk about a new venture in R&D, Reality Labs.
What is Reality Labs?
Reality Labs is a new work stream that we鈥檙e running within R&D. The aim is to carry on the fantastic work we鈥檝e done with virtual reality recently and extend that into other sectors. The blurring between the real and the virtual has been an ongoing strand of work in 大象传媒 R&D for decades and we鈥檙e looking to continue that success.
Initially we鈥檒l be moving forward with near term research projects in Virtual and Augmented Reality and how they could form part of the future of the 大象传媒 and the global media landscape. We鈥檒l also be investigating the use of them in current and evolving production workflows to help the broader 大象传媒 create current forms of content in new ways and understand how they could create new forms of content in the future. We鈥檙e also keen to look a little further over the horizon at what might be possible in 5 years and start to lay the foundations for this.
Open Standards & Best Practice
大象传媒 R&D is committed to supporting and furthering open standards and sharing best practice from our experiences. As part of this we鈥檝e been heavily involved in the development and codification of . More recently we dipped our toe into WebVR with . At the time the WebVR standard was in early development without cross platform support or a robust way to degrade gracefully or be enhanced progressively. Since then there鈥檚 been and projects like have matured, facilitating easier content creation. The Web forms a core part of the 大象传媒 and we think WebVR could be part of that. Some of our focus for the next 12 months will be on the viability of the web as a platform to deliver content to our audience. The broad reach and accessibility of the web is appealing and we鈥檒l be keeping you updated on that as we progress.
We also plan to look at how the could apply to VR, AR and other forms of spatial interfaces. How our audiences discover and interact with our content forms part of their overall experience and we鈥檇 like to start understanding how we can apply this to new technology.
Both of these pieces of work would be much harder without the partners we work with, both internally and externally.
Image above (cropped) by on Flickr, .
Partnerships
As Eleni Sharp outlined in her recent blog post , 大象传媒 R&D has a long history of partnering with organisations, from other broadcasters to academic institutions. More recently, through initiatives like Connected Studio, we鈥檝e developed new ways of working with creatives agencies, start-ups and technology companies to access expertise and talent we don鈥檛 have in-house. We鈥檒l look to leverage these relationships for our ongoing work in Reality Labs, particularly as it鈥檚 such a fast moving sector - we can鈥檛 possibly keep up with everything!
We鈥檒l also be cementing the great relationships we have with creative teams across the organisation as well as the experts in strategy, marketing and audience measurement.
Tooling
Content doesn鈥檛 fall from the sky - fortunately for our production teams! We use hardware and software tools to craft the amazing content that the 大象传媒 and partners create. It鈥檚 no surprise that, given the press and hype around VR & AR, there鈥檚 a plethora of tools available for creating this kind of content. One of the things we鈥檒l be doing over the next year is looking at what is available and creating pilot content in collaboration with the 大象传媒 creative teams. This will allow us to assess how well they fit into existing 大象传媒 workflows and what changes could be made to the tooling or workflows to make creating content easier and for good value.
As part of this we recently launched , an iOS and Android App, based on technology from our partner which allows our production teams to create lightly interactive 360 video experiences with immersive audio.
Augmented Reality
鈥渢he distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion鈥�
Virtual, augmented, mixed. Lots of terms that boil down to one thing, . It鈥檚 a magic trick that鈥檚 been discussed for millennia but became industrialised with , TV & . Without getting too far into the weeds on the various nomenclature and distinctions we want to take a view of the and see how it can work for the 大象传媒. We鈥檝e recently had an related to the upcoming 大象传媒 Two show . In April our Director General Tony Hall announced a new partnership between the 大象传媒 and major cultural organisations, - we鈥檙e really interested in how this technology can help our audience experience the great content the 大象传媒 and partners create and our work in AR will be a key part of that.
Content
As well as all the research outlined above, we鈥檒l be continuing the work of looking at how we can create content for the existing hardware and platforms. Primarily this will be through our relationship with the aforementioned VR Hub and the showcase output that they鈥檒l be creating. There鈥檒l be times when we want to investigate and research a specific element of content creation that won鈥檛 be covered by the slate of work that our partners are working on, though. In these cases we鈥檒l be working with the creative industries to make our own content to evaluate and further our own research. Following on from the award winning collaboration that created , we鈥檝e been working with our friends at to do just that.
How strange. What could it be?
We hope to be able to share a bit more about this, and other content, in the near future. Stay tuned!
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