Virtual reality has become the talk of the Internet in 2016. Everyone is curious about this new technology and how it can impact social media, the entertainment industry, and life in general. In a BBC article written by Tim Maughan back in July, the author writes “… and how do they intend to profit from VR’s promise, navigate the hype, and avoid its current limitations?” In this article, he further explores this question and how we can learn to adjust to the ever-expanding world of technology.

Tim Maughan goes on to discuss how virtual reality “drops an audience into a situation and forces them to react emotionally, in ways that traditional filmmaking or journalism might struggle to do [BCC, Tim Maughan].” This is one of the leading ways in which the entertainment industry can profit from VR. This is analyzed through the consumers who attend Giant, a virtual reality experience inspired by real events. After attending Giant himself, he had asked the creator if they were worried VR wouldn’t catch on and if he thought the operation was risky. The creator of Giant responded simply: “I’m not worried because I know that it’s coming… It might not be at the rate that some people are hyping, but I don’t think as artists we’re hyping it ourselves. We’re just trying to create it.”

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After talking to many people who have experienced VR, creators of VR, and experiencing it for himself, he believes that the expectations surrounding virtual reality are so high that there is a bit of a gap right now in delivering the promise of those expectations. He does believe that the technology is coming and this is just the beginning of the hype. The technology surrounding VR can change many industries, especially the film and gaming industries. It is evident that once people try something and they like it, they will want to buy it. Many people do in fact think that VR will become the next big thing and we must all patiently wait for its break through. I agree that it may not happen today but eventually, with the hype surrounding it in the media, VR will become a huge profitable hit and will in fact change the way we look at technology.

            According to Lee Manovich’s new media principles, virtual reality carries almost all of the characteristics: numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, and transcoding. I mostly see VR carry the modularity characteristic. “Just as a fractal has the same structure on different scales, a new media object has the same modular structure throughout. Media elements, be it images, sounds, shapes, or behaviors, are represented as collections of discrete samples (pixels, polygons, voxels, characters, scripts). These elements are assembled into larger scale objects but they continue to maintain their separate identity (Manovich, New Media, p. 51).” The final product depends on its much smaller counterparts to come together as a successful end piece. In the BBC article, the creators of Giant said they film many different shots from different angles and bring it together to give the audience the illusion of being able to look around at 360 degrees.

Do you believe VR will replace the way we play video games and watch traditional movies?

Will investing in VR technology bring profit or loss to those companies trying to make it happen?