^^ YES!
QuoteI think 360 degree "cinema" or video of any kind is more of a novelty *and* harder to get right. Ensuring your viewer is looking in the right place at the right time, or adapting to them not doing so, will be a huge challenge.
Death to the hollywood model! Its been here since silent films. Enough already, lets move on!... Because of everything you wrote in your next paragraph, so how about this:
Instead of the hollywood model (and repetitive narrative) We make "movies" of one single event. So one fight in a war, one or two hours during a calamity on mars, ect ect. But instead of a single narrative on one linear timeline, every thing that happens, happens simultaneously. All of the 3D characters, and events go on in real time over that two hours regardles if anyone is there to see or hear it or not. Every movie that is made would instantly become re-watchable almost forever. Every time you saw the "movie" it would be unique to you and whoever was with you.
With millions of people watching (unseen by one another or not) there could be whole communities set up to discuss everything you should see the next time you see the show!
Or, like in a game, certain parts of a film only happen once the viewer has triggered it. So a mystery film that has some interactivity, maybe. The possibilities are endless!
Quoteyes I think Terragen-type stuff has a lot more potential to really take off because it generally doesn't require that same kind of specific focus. I can certainly imagine a wonderful flight around Mt. St. Helens or a Mars environment or any number of other things that are made even more enjoyable by the ability to look all around as the camera moves. I do think this has a lot of potential, which almost puts TG users ahead of the game in terms of content production for non-game uses in these VR systems,
Oh man! Add music and sound effects and you got your self the new "crack". We need wind, particles, and better object animation in TG, STAT!.. plus maybe a few other things to put the icing on the cake... Even just google maps would be fun
QuoteI said traditional film storytelling techniques are really going to struggle
Its also likely going to cost them 2-3 times more a film if they try to keep their standard models. But in any case there is going to be a lot more jobs for modelers and asset makers!
QuoteI am sure that services like YouTube will quickly catch up and implement necessary playback tech if the hardware ultimately takes off. It's going to take a critical mass of hardware support though, just as it did for 4k and 60p. It's easier for YouTube and other content aggregators/players to support this kind of tech than on the *production* side of it, of course, but VR in particular is a more demanding area than just bumping up to 4k resolution (a simple increase in resolution vs. a total change in the image projection and scope), or going to 60fps. I'm not aware of a real standard existing for video in 360 degrees yet, though I know Quicktime and other formats do support it. So one or more "standards" will have to gain support first, and in the meantime it's going to be challenging to get your content viewed on all devices and platforms.
Content will dictate winners. The site with the *most* quality content will win. So... Well likely (if you don't really define "Quality" too strictly, than it will be a porn site) but after that, yeah youtube could really grow even monstrously larger than it is. And since you can get youtube on every device...
I completely agree TG is the right tool for this! It makes sense even to a lay person like me. We just need a few more things. But even now we could do some really fun small scale stuff that people would like if there was a way to get it to them.
Like I said you can get a developers kit now for cheap. But I still don't know much about the part where you take a TG world, and put it in a RIFT, where the viewer can do more than just stand still and look around.
this will work with TG, and rift
http://www.kolor.com/video and its affordable.
Rendering the TG world as a 3d environment (whee you can move through it) though is hard to imagine how.
If its as good as people are saying it already is. It sounds almost like a sure thing. No?
