Hollywood & AMC Theaters Back Virtual Reality with Dreamscape Immersive
When I say the name Steven Spielberg it’s fair to imagine that just about every person born within the last forty years has a pretty good idea of his incredible creative force. He’s the director that’s launched not only film franchises but a studio and now he’s part of what may be the most exciting development with respect to Hollywood’s continuing dalliance with virtual reality: Dreamscape Immersive.
Teamed up with long time partner Walter Parkes, Spielberg, along with composer Hans Zimmer and fellow director Gore Verbinski, is aiming to create multi-person, room-scale VR stories and adventures and has recently made a deal with AMC to bring up to six of Dreamscape Immersive’s virtual reality centres to AMC theatres over the next 18 months.
Dreamscape’s CEO is none other than Bruce Vaughan, a former chief creative executive at Walt Disney Imagineering, and beyond the aforementioned, they have signed up none other than Yves Behar to design the look and feel of its physical locations. Dreamscape clearly has the creative firepower other startups can only dream of and represents to date the largest bet by traditional Hollywood power players into the realm of virtual reality. The question of course remains: can they pull this off?
The case against Spielberg, if it’s even possible to make one, is that he has a long history of putting personal film projects ahead of his business interests and there’s sure to be a reticence amongst those in business with Dreamscape that his reputation and interests may eclipse those of the business’s, one of many he’s attached his personal brand to.
As for the system itself, Dreamscape utilizes Artanim’s motion-tracking tech, which uses a head-mounted display, small sensors worn on the hands and feet as well as a backpack computer, freeing up the user to explore a room-sized VR environment without being physically wired. Combined with the kinds of tactile sensation and scents we’ve seen in other physical locations like those created by The Void, the sensation of true immersion that Dreamscape gives the user is second to none.
Of course all of this depends on the kind of content they can plug into the physical locations and this is truly where Dreamscape and its Hollywood pedigree, the rubber meets the road. If Spielberg does put his personal touch on a Dreamscape virtual reality experience then AMC is going to be a huge winner in this deal.
Bottling up some of that Amblin magic not only likely would lead to an amazing creation, but Spielberg’s authorship of a VR experience would force even the most skeptical to flock to the nearest AMC hosting it. It would be the kind of major, big name event that VR has been desperately missing and it could be the kind of thing that puts large-scale adoption over the hump.