Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/863766
48 cgw j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 7 O'Luanaigh says. "It goes into education, film, and TV, and then hotels and pent- house apartments. If you're selling a house, you could actually wander around it! Then you have live broadcasts…." These are only the possibilities that spring to mind now, but as with all media, what is now gener- ates what will be, and who can say where this technology may lead? nDreams' initial products are games, which are the most likely to generate revenue in the immediate future, company officials contend. According to O'Luanaigh, those who buy HMDs initially are "the sort of people who are into new technology. They've got the money." They also tend to be gamers. This year the price of HMDs will fall dramatically, and that's when a poten- tially much wider audience will begin to take on the idea of virtual experiences and virtual worlds. This wider public, O'Luan- aigh says, will at least initially step into VR with experiences and environments that provide the opportunity to be somewhere other than here. "We have this thing called 'Perfect Beach,' which is completely opposite of a game. You just chill and relax, you feel like you're back on holiday for a few minutes, getting away from the craziness of the world," O'Luanaigh says. Jaunt Another company already successfully exploiting the business potential of VR is Jaunt (Santa Monica, California), founded in 2013 by Arthur van Hoff and Jens Chris- tensen, now company CTO, with George Kliavkoff as CEO/president. Jaunt has developed its own technology and product, in readiness for the coming revolution of VR as HMDs hit the wider markets of main- stream personal entertainment. In 2015 I spoke with Jaunt Studios' then president Cliff Plumer. This was still a time when the industry was just beginning to ramp up. Plumer has since moved on to be- come CEO of the immersive entertainment company The Void. Plumer came from the VFX industry, working closely with George Lucas on the first of the digitized series of Star Wars prequels, later assuming the role of CEO of Digital Domain. He saw 2015 as the year when VR was introduced to the content production community, allowing them to develop over the coming years the apps that will catch the public's interest. At the time, Plumer said Jaunt created its own versions of experiences for a variety of audiences, aiming to give the viewer the opportunity to observe an environment from a unique and otherwise inaccessible viewpoint. It provided VR tours for holiday planners, a vertiginous north face ascent alongside a fellow climber, and another that gives the viewer the opportunity to be on stage with Paul McCartney in concert. Jaunt has moved on since those con- versations, and at what I would call a con- siderable pace. Recently, Jaunt VR's head of production, Scott Gemmell, discussed the launch of a number of HMD-delivered VR drama series, developed in conjunc- tion with Hollywood writers and directors, and again shot with Jaunt's proprietary camera technology. At FMX 2015, creating dramas for VR was discussed by a panel headed by Professor Alex McDowell of USC's World Building Institute, where this genre was seen as one of VR's most difficult challenges, particularly how to direct audience attention along a coherent narrative. Gemmell is enthusiastic about the company's ability to meet these brand-new challenges in creativity and tech- nical production. With only one series aired so far, Jaunt is still exploring and learning by experi- ence, determining how to create material that will hold an audience, and Gemmell is confident the group is making solid progress. He made particular mention of heat mapping, soware that allows them to track where the viewer is looking at any given moment, so as to prevent audiences from missing a crucial moment because they're looking the wrong way. But Gemmell suggests that's simply old-fashioned movie thinking, and believes a new form of storytelling will emerge that de- fies such assumptions. As he says, there are the technical issues of shooting in a 360-de- gree studio – for instance, no personnel or equipment can be in the room. For Gemmell, though, that only points to solutions that involve 360-degree narratives so that the audience's varying focus of attention can be met (which chimes with the World Building Institute's research work). Gemmell is confident of continued ex- pansion in this market, with more and more product becoming available, and adds that his team is fired up at the possibilities of what they have only just begun. At present, the episodes in the Jaunt se- ries run 5 to 10 minutes each. The team was concerned about how long people would be comfortable wearing a tethered HMD, but "a lot of people binge-watched the JAUNT IS DEVELOPING ITS OWN VR TECHNOLOGY (RIGHT) FOR UNIQUE EXPERIENCES, SUCH AS THIS CONCERT (LEFT).