What is Immersive Experience?

 

Source Courtesy of Freepik. (VR Experience)

Immersive experience can be facilitated through digital media environment using Head-mounted Display (HMD) where the audience is being transported digitally to simulated virtual environment. In this way the attention of the audience solely focuses on the environment that they are exploring and interacting with, giving more memorable experiences and total engagement in the virtual world.¹ VR is going to play an incredibly important role in the history of mediums. As Chris Milk explained it in his TED talk, it’s the first medium that makes the jump from our internalisation of an author’s expression of an experience, to our experiencing it firsthand.³ Virtual reality bridges the gap between being just an audience to an active participant. The audience becomes a part of the story where they can shape the narrative, becoming storytellers themselves. VR is a medium where our consciousness is inside the simulation narrated and controlled by us as a center of the story.

Films and Storytelling

“The power of individual user as an interactor within a story space, and a new way to develop powerful stories that come out of cinematic tradition” – Alex McDowell, Narrative Designer, Creative Director. ² How can we use modern technologies to tell more compelling stories that will give more impact compared to our traditional film? The notion of virtual reality is the power that it gives the audience to become part of the story, whereas a traditional film making is passive watching from a device that acts like a window. In other words, in virtual reality we are inside the story, and we are immersed in the world we are exploring, according to Chris Milk from his TedTalk (2015).⁴ Technology evolves as well as human interaction, from telling a story to visualisation. Imagine a world where we can create new dimensions and reshape reality in our own way, where there is no limit to our imagination in any shape or form. We can transcend our dreams and make them a reality where our audience can experience all the emotions, all the narrative and awe that we can achieve through virtual reality.

Entertainment and Virtual Reality

Cinema will continue to evolve, and it will be more successful than ever. There will be an evolution of all media and the possibility of broad creative collaborations.² Entertainment industry will strive to create better experience for audiences, as we are moving to a future of digitalisation. According to evaluation of Di Lei and Sae-Hoon Kim from Sejong University, the analysis says that virtual reality scored the highest from four forms of films and television animation.⁵ Virtual reality as form of entertainment compared to other medium ranks better in the research which implies that it has more impact on the audience. There is still room for improvement since VR hardware is in the early stage of development. The more designers and artists bring unique experiences, the more people will be interested in participating.

The future of virtual reality as a medium will grow by creating and building better interactive experiences. In addition, immersive experience will continue to evolve as the hardware and software becomes better and more seamless to wear and use. It is evident, and I stand by it too, that this digital media will play a good part in our future. Joseph Bates mentioned a writer envisioning virtual reality as a “Fantasy Machine”. On his paper, there was writer of a popular science article learned about virtual reality research. When the writer tested the machine and after three months the articles appeared around the writer’s experience during that time “I opened my eyes and had been transported in time and space. VR will let us enter our fantasies.”⁶ The potential of this machine is limitless with the help of our imagination and creativity. To achieve this, we will need to explore all the possibilities and test ideas and get feedback to improve the experience.

My Conclusion

Virtual reality will play a big role in the future of mediums and how we leverage technology in our daily lives. My current role is a Designer in a government side in business and technology. We are creating engaging content for learning or telling a story about a certain topic through videos or motion graphics that interpret the intentions of the project. I’ve been using motion graphics and infographics as my medium; we use it to communicate and create helpful guidelines for using the technology as part of our system. We’ve enhanced our medium from PowerPoint presentations to motion graphics, making the possibility of having Virtual Reality as a medium a massive advancement. Having a medium that can visualize a narrative and lets the employees engage with it is a game changer. I can see how business is interested in integrating this kind of technology to ease the process of training of the work force.

Virtual Reality can bridge the gap of simply listening and watching to interacting and learning the process with more engaging and hands-on involvement. This will also help to create reusable content that can be shared with everyone in any part of the world, bringing us closer to global collaboration.

List of Illustrations:

Freepik:

VR Experience: https://www.freepik.com/free-ai-image/caucasian-child-enjoys-futuristic-vr-adventure-nature-generated-by-ai_42597513.htm#page=3&query=immersive%20experience&position=13&from_view=search&track=ais

 

 

References:

1. Zhang, C. (2020) The Why, what, and how of Immersive Experience. Published by IEEE (volume 8) 11 May, (Online) Available at: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9091071/authors#authors (Accessed: 22^nd May 2023)
2. McDowell, A. (2015) World Building and Narrative. LinkedIn Learning. 9 October. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/alex-mcdowell-world-building-and-narrative/introduction?autoplay=true&resume=false&u=50251009 (Accessed: 22^nd May 2023)
3. Milk, C. (2016) The birth of virtual reality as an art form. TedTalk. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_the_birth_of_virtual_reality_as_an_art_form?subtitle=en (Accessed: 23 May 2023)
4. Milk, C. (2015) How Virtual Reality can create the ultimate empathy machine. TedTalk. Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine  (Accessed: 24 May 2023)
5. Lei, D. and Kim, S. (2021) Application of wireless virtual reality perception and simulation technology in film and television Animation. 209 Neungdong-ro, Gnuja-dong, Wgwangjin-gu, Seol, Republic of Korea. 18 November. Available at: https://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/js/2021/5041832.pdf  (Accessed: 24 May 2023)
6. Bates, J. (1991) Virtual Reality, Art, and Entertainment. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments. School of Computer Science and College of Fine Arts Carnegie Mellon University. 1 June. Available at: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=0c52e3b5e38090dcd6abf8b8e766f053922cc084 (Accessed: 24 May 2023)