How might we watch films in the future? If the following demo is anything to go by, it's going to be "closely". From within the very scenes themselves.
The astonishing video below was demoed at the annual Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco earlier this week. Made by leading virtual reality developers Nurulize, it shows off the incredible level of detail available to VR studios using the latest developer kit for the clever goggles, Oculus Rift.
From fibres on a jacket sleeve, to the cracked plastering by the window, the level of detail demonstrated in the short shows just how our experience of games and films could be set to change forever. While the jerky footage is being controlled from a PC, in the final VR film, viewers will be able to "walk" around the scene, looking at individual details or even gazing out of the window if they so wished.
The demo is centred around a scene from RISE, a short film by David Karlak which received funding via Kickstarter last year.
RISE tells the story of a robot uprising, from the perspective of our android chums. It's set for release later this year.
Virtual Reality has come a long way, hasn't it?