A year ago I created Building a Bob House, a computer animated rendering of an ice fishing shack being assembled in the middle of an frozen lake.

Building a Bob House

This is the same scene, but rendered in stereoscopic 360 3D video to be viewed in a VR head-mounted display like the Google Cardboard.

If you’re viewing this from a desktop browser or an iOS device, then you’ll see it as a 360 video. Try it on an Android device with Google Cardboard VR headset for the full 360 3D stereoscopic experience.

I wanted to compare the feeling of traditional cinematic 2D with immersive 360 stereoscopic virtual reality. It made sense to use the same scene as a control.

The traditional cinematic 2D version has the advantages of controlling the audience’s view by framing the shot. This, combined with cutting to different shots allows the director to tell a story by focusing the audience’s attention.

The 360 stereoscopic VR version has the advantage of giving the audience an immersive feeling of presence and the freedom to look anywhere they want. With this freedom comes a sense of “missing out”, where the audience feels like they may be missing something important because they are not looking in the right direction.
In the short-term, this may be good for boosting replay stats as audiences may re-watch the video multiple times from different points-of-view, but this is ultimately annoying, especially for longer-form content.

Directors will have to find a careful balance of focused attention and immersion.

VR is going to be a challenging medium to tell stories in, but that unique feeling of presence will be worth it.