If ‘Time Comes’ for Mainstreaming of VR Programs, BBC Says It Will Be ‘Ready’
Whether virtual reality is how all BBC programs will be viewable one day is a question “we are unlikely to have a clear answer to” for many years, said BBC Research and Development Controller Andy Conroy in a Thursday blog…
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post. “Our research will make sure that if that time comes, the BBC is ready.” New media “come along rarely, and those that stand the test of time are rarer still,” he said. The BBC “helped pioneer and develop” radio in the 1920s, TV in the 1930s and digital delivery in the 1980s, he said. “And it’s in that tradition we are exploring 360 video and VR now, in collaboration with the industry. This will help inform any strategy the BBC may need in future.” VR and 360 video “are emerging media the BBC needs to explore," Conroy said. “Our motive with these technologies is the same for the others we are researching -- how might they improve the BBC’s ability to better inform, educate and entertain.” Truly interactive VR video “is in its infancy and can be expensive to create,” he said. All of the true VR “experiments” the BBC is conducting “seek to address different challenges that will provide invaluable insights for the organisation now and in the future,” he said. For example, the BBC worked with Aardman Studios to produce video for the Oculus Rift VR headset, he said. The video “uses real stories of refugees as the basis for an animated virtual experience, helping to give audiences a sense of presence by placing them at the heart of the story, and with technology allowing interactive eye-contact between them and the characters,” he said. The BBC is “learning a great deal” from its VR experiments “about production techniques and workflows, user experience, and the technology of capture and distribution,” he said.