Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/714180
EVEREST VR www.postmagazine.com 33 POST AUGUST 2016 I t's a dream for so many: climbing Everest, the highest mountain in the world. But for most, this dream will never become a reality. The trek requires long, intensive training and is fraught with danger — over the years, the moun- tain has claimed 250-plus lives and count- ing. Thanks to virtual reality, however, those dreamers no longer have to be left out in the cold. That's because VR specialists Solfar Studios and VFX facility RVX have teamed up on the CG adventure Everest VR, a virtual-reality application that presents the famous mountain in realis- tic detail and sends users on a journey of a lifetime to experience the same view and climb for which so many have risked their lives. Where does a CG artist begin when setting out to accurately re-create such an imposing environment? Luckily, there was an experienced adventurer on the team who had conquered the mountain before — Dadi Einarsson, creative director at RVX, who served as visual effects su- pervisor on last year's feature film Everest, based on the 1996 disaster on the moun- tain that left eight climbers dead when a fierce blizzard rolled in. Everest director Baltasar Kormakur wanted to give audi- ences "a sense of place, with Everest in all its glory, might and danger." "The way we created the mountain [for Everest VR] evolved out of what we did on the film," says Einarsson. "We had created the whole environment in low resolution, and popped in super-high-res- olution images for the scenes in the film. For Everest VR, we figured out a pipeline for which we could make the whole mountain range in 3D, and make it photorealistic and beautiful." In fact, the idea of building an authentic VR experience centered on Mount Everest came as a result of the work Einarsson and RVX did for the film. "We had visited him at the studio and came to find out they had created the full mountain in 3D. We had no idea that was possible," says Reynir Hardarson, co-founder/creative di- rector at Solfar Studios, a VR games and experience company founded less than two years ago. Seeing the 3D model sparked the idea for an Everest virtual-reality experience, and a partnership between the two companies, both located in Iceland, was formed. While Solfar is focused on virtual reality, the staff's experience was born in the gaming world, where the artists honed their skills with realtime graphics. "VR is very different from television and games, though," says Hardarson. "The environment is extremely important in VR. You spend your time inside the environment rather than just looking at it from the outside. So, they really need to be compelling." With virtual-reality experiences, it's a lot about the look of the imagery. "Gameplay is important, but in a differ- ent sense; it's not about scoring points," explains Hardarson. "Visual quality is incredibly important because we are com- paring [the graphics] to reality for a very emotionally-driven experience." To this end, the partnership with RVX on the project was "a match made in heaven," says Hardarson. "They also have a strong focus on visual quality, and their background comes from the visual effects industry." So, the work began, with RVX handling mainly the VFX, and Solfar, the realtime aspect and lighting/shaders, though each often crossed boundaries with close collabo- ration. In total, approximately 15 to 20 people worked on the project. PICTURE PERFECT Despite RVX's prior Everest work, the artists started from scratch when build- ing the Mount Everest model for this project. "It's a totally different medium with totally different needs from the film," says Einarsson. The groups first spent approximately a year in prototyping. "We did a lot of prototyping early on because we were pushing boundaries that hadn't been pushed before in VR," says Hardarson. "There was a lot of work to be done on the technical side. We had to overcome things like memory limitations on the graphics hardware. We had to figure out ways to create this so it could run on a regular computer at 90 frames per sec- ond (fps) in VR. The difference between making Everest, a real-world place, and computer games is that we cannot use any digital trickery with the landscapes. Every pixel has to be in the correct place. This creates a massive challenge when it comes to video memory." The artists at RVX built the mountain using photographic modeling techniques. Everest VR places users at the top of the world. Snow covers the major- ity of the landscape and can be seen blowing in the wind. Artists used a range of methods to create the snow and effects, including Nvidia's Turbulence fluid sim.