Wang says he thought it would still take some time for the public to really embrace metaverse technology, but he was surprised at how quickly the time slots for each experience was booked long before the event began - especially compared to last year’s expo.
One day, the staff tells me, they hope that it will be common for every household to own one. During the annual Kaohsiung Film Festival, they also allow people to rent headsets so they can get used to watching movies with the device in their home. For example, Kaohsiung’s VR Film Lab can seat up to 30 people per screening since 360 degree movies require less space than interactive ones. Sick Rose is a VR film created entirely from stop-motion using traditional dough figurines.īut there is progress. A neat-looking interactive AR film that only requires a tablet cannot be played at home yet due to massive file size. For instance, people cannot sing real-time duets in virtual karaoke unless they both have 5G. Plus, one can’t really experience that many products in one go as the devices are still slightly uncomfortable (especially for someone wearing glasses) and some of the content can make people dizzy.Ī lot of these productions can only be displayed at exhibitions or film festivals, either due to logistics, physical space or system requirements. After all, the main goal of expos is to display the possibilities for potential users, or creative and business partners.įor example, due to the limited number of headsets, virtually all the immersion events were booked before the event started. However, it still feels that there are limitations to these magical tools as far as popularization goes, at least for now. Huang Hsin-chien’s Samsara Ep 1 won Best VR Story at this year’s Cannes XR event. This is part of a larger venture between the Seden Society Puppet Theater Foundation (西田社布袋戲基金會) and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University that attempts to combine AI and other tech to promote and preserve the art of puppetry. On the other side of the exhibition, which focuses on interactive entertainment applications, a woman using a motion sensitive smart glove to control a Taiwanese hand puppet catches my eye. This is a highly effective way to combine tradition and the latest technology, and could be important in keeping dying arts alive in the future.
Set during a pandemic in a fantastic Taiwan-esque landscape, it employs old-school stop-motion animation with traditional dough figurines. The VR film The Sick Rose (病玫瑰) by HTC Vive Originals is also such a combination. The VR content is interspersed with old photos, which is a wonderful way to make education fun. As a history buff, I enjoyed the four-minute video on the changes in Taipei’s railroad system over a century, bringing to life actual miniature models belonging to the Kaohsiung Museum of History. Not all projects rely purely on 3D animation, and it’s encouraging to see the combination of physical crafts and VR. An interactive AR short film entitled Fix You.