Samsung Gear VR
For those who don't know, VR stands for “Virtual Reality”. This weekend's Men’s NCAA Final Four and National Championship basketball games will be streaming live in VR. Using the Samsung Gear VR headset you can download the NCAA March Madness Live app from the Oculus Store and watch the event “court side” from the couch of your living room. The 360-degree panoramic footage will seek to emulate the jaw dropping adrenaline rush as you watch professional and or/college athletes compete from the vantage point of a sideline seat.
The interactive medium was initially introduced in the side spaces of arcades and movie theaters during the early 90’s and never became popular. The VR pods were clunky, the 3D imagery was choppy, and the “adventure” was ultimately boring—thus becoming a phased out option for experiential media. Now almost 22 years later, VR is back in the public’s eye but this "go around" the current technology possesses a product lifespan with a potential longevity. Consumers can check out high resolution, mind-blowing 360 views using sleeker glasses through VR devices like Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, Gear VR, and HTC Vive. In the space of tech-media, it's common knowledge that VR has been revolutionizing the gaming world for the past year or so, however the medium is now beginning to penetrate the mainstream through the entertainment industry.
In addition, to the NCAA Final Four and Championship games, this year’s Coachella is already setting the bar for VR innovation as it’s working with Vantage.tv on filming a virtual reality version of the various musical acts—thus making the VR material available to those who cannot attend the annual music festival in person. This conversation can't help but raise the question of whether VR will enhance the "audience experience" by increasing accessibility to popular live events (via VR) or eventually threaten to disrupt the marketplace all together in the future years to come.
With that being said, it’s important to also recognize the negative impact VR could have on the communal and social aspect of viewership as well as the repercussions it could cause to physical activity and the rising obesity issue in America. Will society become so consumed in virtual content that our actual, tangible realities become a faded figment of the past? I hope we don’t become the alienated, overweight, immobile humans from Wall-E.
In addition, VR is already beginning to dominate the porn industry. The gratuitous nature of the porn genre, has always been contingent on the fantastical heights of voyeuristic intrigue, essentially the act of "watching". However, VR introduces deeper psychological elements of simulation and mental interaction as the user assumes the full POV (point of view) of the "actor". With that being said, as the line between fantasy and reality becomes blended and skewed, will we also experience a negative impact concerning sexual relations between real human partners? Will rates of addiction rise?
Putting these cautionary thoughts aside, VR is the 2016 medium to watch and many tech media industry leaders are seeing viable application and market potential for “virtual reality” in various sectors of entertainment, education, gaming, and even military use.