Gadgetory

I'm Joanie Salzmann and I'm Scott Stein we spent a lot of time at the Tribeca Film Festival in the last week and a half and it's kind of a rarified experience getting to go through some of these VR installations so we thought we'd walk you through our experience and one in particular yeah Jack which was the wildest one we did and is basically blends VR and immersive theater so it's kind of like using a VR headset at home but the cool thing about what you get to do a lot of these festivals and spaces it's more like an art installation so you're free to move in this larger space and you wear the headset and you interact with actual actors I got suited into this VR backpack and put on the headset and it was gonna come next there's also an entertainment complex called the void that does this with Star Wars and things like that difference here is again live actors so I was put through a door and then all of a sudden I'm in this cartoon house and as I'm walking around I don't have controllers which is the other cool part it's using leap motion which is using sensing to track my hands without any control so I see a light as I walk past the dangling light it actually hits me in the head so there's a real objects I can reach out and grab the light I go to the teapot there's a real teapot and my frog mom is with a broom she pushes the broom hits me in the foot with the real broom tells me to go sell a radio and I don't know if I'm gonna do that and I started to talk and I realized I can say whatever I want and they're acting back with me and suddenly I'm in a play and then I had to was she left and I had to go figure out what to do and all of a sudden this airship arrives on a balcony and I go I'm just trial walk out there sure and I'm able to walk anywhere and I step out onto the balcony with wind and this bird creature trader honk Birds merchant yes a few odd bird merchants once this something to buy and I don't know what so I try to fake her out by grabbing something else like it like a tea pot she does no that's not interesting so finally I take the radio and she grabs it from me and I'm like pulling with a real radio over the balcony and she takes it and and I've lose the negotiation and I get handed a giant magic bean and mom comes back and gets really upset and I'm just like becoming Jack at this point and then a beanstalk Rises but at this point I thought wow I'm walking around I'm sitting on the bed I'm doing these things I know imma just are gonna in a thing that almost feels like a video game but the fact that I can say whatever I want starts to put me in the role and you went through a - yeah I think we actually had a slightly different experience naturally by the nature of there being live actors and you responding to them and then responding to you everybody's experience is gonna be a little bit different the story definitely follows a very there are definitely points that all follow the same arc like I also my my frog mom was also sweeping a broom but when I first interacted with it with her it was me taking initiative touching her before she reached me so I reached out to touch her and kind of surprised myself when I reached out to touch her and I didn't just bat away err it was an actual human-like flesh-and-blood thing who got annoyed with me for bothering her while she was trying to clean so I it's neat that you can kind of you start to develop a relationship with a trained actor who knows how to create a relationship with an audience member that they're supposed to be interacting with it was like am I just doing like comedy improv now with the with the trader and and it reminds me of those NPC scenes and video games were like you know at what point like do I not have a choice and what would happen if I like if I wasn't in the mood would would they find a way to still guide me almost like a theme park now talk about your experience at the end at the conclusion of that chapter of the story because I think we had a different experience with that - you did okay so I remember at the very end that I think the Frog mom goes away this is where it gets a little fuzzy frog mom goes away I go what do I and she's really upset like you know what did you do jack it's haffley you've traded her beloved radio yes crappy magical bean she throws my bean out the window as you would expect I get very I don't know what I'm just saying mom come on I'm playing along and as she leaves there's a rumbling and all of a sudden everything begins to get kind of crazy and actually everything is moving and then I don't know what's going on everything kind of whited out and then I turned around and I saw that there was a beanstalk sprouting and that's when I said oh it's the you know I figured the big Beanstalk and then I know what to happen then I they just kind of like fades out and it's like you know to be continued and I think I got at that point I remember what happened I think they took my headset off obviously but I was in the room I was not in the room I got led out they led you and back out onto the balcony so I saw nothing that was in the room but I know that we recorded what was in the room and it I peeked at it later and it looks nothing like what I thought it would I know I didn't get to see anything in there so I think what happened is you actually had a computer malfunction yeah because I at the end of mine she throws the beam out the window the ground begins to shake and the room begins to shake visually and you're lifted like you feel the sensation of the whole house being lifted up on the Beanstalk and at the end of mine instead of it Whiting out it kind of you can look around and you can see things and you're lifted up very high in the air you can look down the Beanstalk and it kind of transitions to showing you the door in virtual reality that you came in through and it says above the door to be continued so it prompts you to lead yourself through the door that's actually to the door to the room so that you can transition to the next part of the story which hasn't been made yet but that makes a lot more sense but I think it's a testament to how these things work that it it didn't go as planned with yours but you story wise you couldn't really tell but it was fine and and you could tell that that's a problem see things logistically or so there's so many things going on that we're do install this I guess like they're trying to find places to do this but it's not easy production so that's our VR theater experience part one you