Multimedia

Virtual Reality Filmmaking presents a comprehensive guide to the use of virtual reality in filmmaking, including narrative, documentary, live event production, and more. Written by Celine Tricart, a filmmaker and an expert in new technologies, the book provides a hands-on guide to creative filmmaking in this exciting new medium, and includes coverage on how to make a film in VR from start to finish. Topics covered include:

• The history of VR;
• VR cameras;
• Game engines and interactive VR;
• The foundations of VR storytelling;
• Techniques for shooting in live action VR;
• VR postproduction and visual effects;
• VR distribution;
• Interviews with experts in the field including the Emmy-winning studios Felix & Paul and Oculus Story Studio, Wevr, Viacom, Fox Sports, Sundance’s New Frontier, and more.

• O Reilly Media

Storytelling for Virtual Reality serves as a bridge between students of new media and professionals working between the emerging world of VR technology and the art form of classical storytelling. Rather than examining purely the technical, the text focuses on the narrative and how stories can best be structured, created, and then told in virtual immersive spaces. Author John Bucher examines the timeless principles of storytelling and how they are being applied, transformed, and transcended in Virtual Reality. Interviews, conversations, and case studies with both pioneers and innovators in VR storytelling are featured, including  industry leaders at LucasFilm, 20th Century Fox, Oculus, Insomniac Games, and Google.

For more information about story, Virtual Reality, this book, and its author, please visit StorytellingforVR.com

A Wired senior editor and virtual reality expert presents a captivating, candid glimpse into the future "realities" of this emerging technology: how we will use it to form previously impossible relationships, explore new frontiers of intimacy, and how it will forever change human connection.

Heralded as the most significant technological innovation since the smartphone, virtual reality is poised to transform our very notions of life and humanity. Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. VR will change how we work, how we experience entertainment, how we feel pleasure and other emotions, how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we relate to each other in the real world. And we will never be the same.

Peter Rubin, senior culture editor for Wired and the industry’s go-to authority on the subject, calls it an "intimacy engine." While once we needed another person to feel the sensations of closeness, trust, vulnerability, confidence, and titillation, VR will give us the ability to induce these sensations by ourselves for the first time in human history. This metamorphosis, Rubin argues, is going to have a powerful impact on relationships that will ripple throughout our society and our individual lives.

A journey into this uncertain future and a glimpse at the cultural implications and promises of a new reality, Future Presence explores a host of complex questions about what makes us human, what connects us, and what is real. Offering a glimpse into the mind-blowing things happening in universities, labs, and tech companies around the world, Rubin leads readers on an entertaining tour of the weirdest, wildest corners of this fascinating new universe. Describing this book as "half travelogue and half crystal ball", Rubin will:

• Introduce readers to the creators and consumers of VR technology
• Show readers what an experience is like inside the current VR devices
• Explain how this technology will upend everything we know about human connection in the future

At once the incredible, inevitable story of virtual reality’s rise and a look towards the future of our fantasies, Future Presence is a deeply personal examination of what connects us, and an analysis of what relationships, empathy, and sex could look like—sooner than we think.

An in-depth look at virtual reality and how it can be harnessed to improve our everyday lives.

Virtual reality is able to effectively blur the line between reality and illusion, pushing the limits of our imagination and granting us access to any experience imaginable. With well-crafted simulations, these experiences, which are so immersive that the brain believes they’re real, are already widely available with a VR headset and will only become more accessible and commonplace. But how does this new medium affect its users, and does it have a future beyond fantasy and escapism?

In Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson draws on two decades spent researching the psychological effects of VR and other mass media to help readers understand this powerful new tool. He offers expert guidelines for interacting with VR and describes the profound ways this technology can be put to use―not to distance ourselves from reality, but to enrich our lives and influence us to treat others, the environment, and even ourselves better. In the world of VR, a football quarterback plays a game against a competing team hundreds of times before even stepping onto the field; members of the United Nations embody a young girl in a refugee camp going through her day-to-day life; and veterans once again walk through the streets where they had experienced trauma.

There are dangers and many unknowns in using VR, but it also can help us hone our performance, recover from trauma, improve our learning and communication abilities, and enhance our empathic and imaginative capacities. Like any new technology, its most incredible uses might be waiting just around the corner. Experience on Demand is the definitive look at the risks and potential of VR―a must-read for navigating both the virtual and the physical worlds ahead.

An easy-to-understand primer on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are driving the next technological revolution. If you want to get in on the action, this book helps you understand what these technologies are, their history, how they’re being used, and how they’ll affect consumers both personally and professionally in the very near future.

With VR and AR poised to become mainstream within the next few years, an accessible book to bring users up to speed on the subject is sorely needed—and that’s where this handy reference comes in! Rather than focusing on a specific piece of hardware (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, iOS ARKit) or software (Unity, Unreal Engine), Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies offers a broad look at both VR and AR, giving you a bird’s eye view of what you can expect as they continue to take the world by storm.

* Keeps you up-to-date on the pulse of this fast-changing technology

* Explores the many ways AR/VR are being used in fields such as healthcare, education, and entertainment

* Includes interviews with designers, developers, and technologists currently working in the fields of VR and AR

Perfect for both potential content creators and content consumers, this book will change the way you approach and contribute to these emerging technologies.