
Next Attenborough documentary being filmed for Oculus Rift - shaneofalltrad
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-04/11/oculus-rift-attenborough
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aresant
I subscribe to the r/oculus where this is the big thread and top comment is
from the team behind idea and slightly debunks the claim while suggesting
they'd like to kickstart it:

Hey guys, I'm from Atlantic Productions and this whole article is about 60%
correct. We're currently working with the rift and we're really excited by it.
We've got a couple of things in development at the moment, maybe three things
in fact. They're all potentially fantastic projects but as you all know it's
quite a difficult thing right now to fund development of these things. We're
considering putting out a kickstarter for a project but we'd only put it out
there if we knew you guys were interested. So as a very simple show of hands
kind of thing, if we were to make an immersive documentary, where you are in
the scene, would you be interested in helping fund that in a kickstarter?
Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/22rqvu/next_attenbor...](http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/22rqvu/next_attenborough_documentary_filmed_for_the_rift/)

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etiam
With Oculus' now rather unsavoury connections I really hope documentaries like
these will be made available in some format that's easily portable to other VR
devices. As for the plans to support VR at all: Great. I hope this is going to
work out well. I can't think of many recordings more deserving of immersive
visual experience than those of Sir David Attenborough.

~~~
loceng
Facebook is a controlled ecosystem and based on their previous behaviour they
will try to maintain as much internally as possible - which will mean keeping
as much media exclusive for Facebook as possible.

~~~
etiam
I agree. All the more reason then to try to release things like these
documentaries in a more general format as well; alternatively just in the more
general format with an adaptation layer to support the Rift. I'd hate to see
vendor lock-in for gems like these, especially if it's a company like Facebook
they're being locked in to.

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machbio
After Bashing Facebook for acquiring Oculus Rift, finally there is something
to show the hn people - thinking beyond the use cases previously thought will
help bringing the technology closer to consumers. Oculus Rift use case of
hardcore gaming is still alive and facebook acquiring is a good nothing so
that people David and his team can invest time to bring their content Oculus
Rift. Thanks David for showing us new uses for the Oculus Rift..

~~~
bane
Immerse 3d video is one of the original use-cases for VR tech and is pretty
common. I remember seeing ads for headsets in Skymall of all places in the
90s. If anything, this is strong confirmation that the OR is not going to find
a good home for the original use-case and FB is just turning it into a big
media delivery channel.

[http://www.zeiss.com/cinemizer-
oled/en_de/home.html](http://www.zeiss.com/cinemizer-oled/en_de/home.html)

[http://store.sony.com/wearable-
hdtv-2d-3d-virtual-7.1-surrou...](http://store.sony.com/wearable-
hdtv-2d-3d-virtual-7.1-surround-sound-zid27-HMZT3W/cat-27-catid-3D-Personal-
Viewer)

[http://www.ebay.com/bhp/3d-virtual-video-
glasses](http://www.ebay.com/bhp/3d-virtual-video-glasses)

[http://www.amazon.com/72-Inch-Virtual-Digital-Glasses-
Multim...](http://www.amazon.com/72-Inch-Virtual-Digital-Glasses-
Multimidea/dp/B007PAUCKG)

(and dozens of other products)

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badsock
There's something I don't understand: I've heard that one of the keys for
avoiding VR motion sickness is having both rotational _and_ positional head
tracking.

A naive interpretation would be that for that to be possible from a
prerecording, you'd have to have a 360 degree recording from the perspective
of each cubic millimeter whithin the given volume of space that you'd expect
someone's head to move.

Of course that's impossible, and there's certainly ways to interpolate from
fewer viewpoints, but I've not heard of any that sounds like it's convincingly
solved the problem. Is there one?

~~~
tizzdogg
Without even considering positional head tracking, just the act of rotating
your head moves the location of your eyeballs in space (our eyes are not the
center of rotation of our head, our neck is). So I'm also doubtful that this
will end up looking any better than a simple 3d QuickTime VR sphere.

~~~
MrScruff
Having viewed one of these mono 360 clips on an Occulus I would say it's a
significant step up from watching it on a monitor. However you're right that a
truly compelling experience will require full 3D reconstruction of the
environment so you can render both eyes in realtime with head tracking.

That's probably feasible for some types of simple scenes but probably not a
nature documentary.

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conchy
Attenborough has been pushing the envelope of new visual technologies for a
LONG time. Bravo to him for keeping at it. I can't wait to see it.

~~~
shaneofalltrad
I would like to see the Tokay Gecko again, but this time walking in front of
me 3D, that would be awesome. So not just nature, but science in this form.

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fidotron
Ignoring all the Oculus/FB stuff, what will be intriguing about this kind of
thing is how the whole idea of editing to fit an existing narrative with time
adapts to any sort of VR. For example, any ideas of transitions, or attempts
to draw attention to one thing in a scene, use of zoom lenses and so on.

Anyone that's spent more than a few weeks in the wilderness in one go knows it
has a profound effect on your ability to spot something out of place very
quickly indeed. The curious thing here is if you could recreate such a
situation with VR, or if the attention span of the audience will drag you back
to a situation of having to highlight everything for people not accustomed to
that sort of scene.

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rwmj
This is an interesting Oculus app using 6 GoPro cameras to capture a vertical
flight in a small drone copter of some sort:

[https://share.oculusvr.com/app/hiyoshi-
jump](https://share.oculusvr.com/app/hiyoshi-jump)

It's kind of interesting to "play" with. It's an absolutely massive download
however because of all the captured video that is necessary to allow the user
to look in any direction.

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vdaniuk
I want to express my great respect to David Attenborough and love for his
documentaries. They are absolutely incredible. For me, this is a killer
content for Oculus Rift, even if they are owned by Facebook now.

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tormeh
Making View does something similar [0]. For the 2D 360 experience see [1].
There's lots of visual artifacts, but pretty awesome nonetheless.

0: [http://www.makingview.com/making-viewer-vr-
edition/](http://www.makingview.com/making-viewer-vr-edition/) 1:
[http://www.makingview.com/portfolio/wingsuit-flight-from-
flo...](http://www.makingview.com/portfolio/wingsuit-flight-from-flo/)

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shaneofalltrad
His first documentaries gave me I life long passion for nature and animals. I
hope they do it right.

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nathan_f77
I am super excited about this! I also really want to see something like
"Samsara" filmed for the Oculus Rift.

