HACKING XR

Pirates, Poets and Pioneers. That's how I introduced the fantastic group that is now our HackingVR class, on our very first day. Well, you don't disappoint. Believe it or not, half the semester has flown by. Ideas, attentive learning, and creative thinking, have allowed us to explore VR and Immersive Media Production from a variety of angles, going from "I've never done this before" and "I don't know what I'm doing" to actual project plans, surprising UX/UI designs and immers

Creator: UsTwo, Jan. 2015 VR Technology: CGI Viewing System: Samsung GearVR When I saw the screenshots for Lands End, I expected a very simplistic game with some small puzzles scattered throughout. What I didn’t expect was a fully immersive puzzle exploration game. Lands End is a free stand-alone GearVR game with 5 chapters created by British studio, UsTwo, in January 2015. The world of Lands End is a gorgeously rendered 3D universe. In order to move around this world, the pl

Developed by: SUPERHOT team, assisted by Oculus Release: December 2016 Platform: Oculus Rift, adapted from PC SUPERHOT is a fighting game where time only moves as fast as you do. Each level places you in an untextured 3D environment and pits you against one or more low-poly red humanoid enemies which you must kill to progress. There are a wide array of weapons in the game which can be used by both the player and the enemies. The catch is that when you don't move, all the en

Creators: Dana Abrassart, Paula Ceballos, Leslie Ruckman (NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program) Platform: Oculus Rift When We Die (WWD) is a meditation on mortality and dying, created by three students at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. I had the chance to try this app at a Consciousness Hacking event hosted in Harvard Divinity School’s chapel; the perfect setting for a meditation of any kind. The experience includes two chapters that take place in to tw

Creator: Philipp Maas, Dominik Stockhausen, and Alexander Mass Platform: Samsung Gear VR Sonar is an ominous story set in the caverns of a foreign planet. It was created for Gear VR at the Filmakademie Braden Württemberg under the direction of Philipp Maas. Although the experience is not interactive, Maas successfully immerses the viewer through four techniques: 1) providing consistent audio and visual depth 2) cutting only when non-invasive solutions were feasible 3) introdu

Creator: Aurel Manea Productions VR Technology : 3D Parallax Photography Viewing System : Samsung Gear VR Aurel Manea is a photographer and a technical editor, and he combines these two passions to create fantastic virtual reality displays of his impressive work. In Window to the World, Manea showcases his best landscape pictures with a stunning 3D effect, created manually from original 2D photographs using a spin on traditional parallax techniques. The application is set in