Construct VR - The Volumetric Movie Reviews

Viewed with the Vive Pro 2 Like many others, I came across Buffering problems, It would stop from time to time to buffer which I do not understand the reason for this. The Vive Pro 2 can handle up to 5K resolution with the right graphics card but I did not try to view it with this resolution. Other than that. It is a fun Story to watch and I really enjoyed it. Very well made. Hope to see more to come. Thank you

a very cool medium for new stories to be told with lots of potential, however, this first film was pretty weak story-wise. fun to try out for <3$ though.

Technically it's pretty good. The (motion captured) movement is great, the visuals are surprisingly sharp for a 3D movie, and the choreography in the fight scenes are cool. I didn't like the fact that they change scale/perspective, and that you had to turn to watch some of the action. For each new clip you spend a moment figuring out where you're supposed to look, and adjusting to the scale. It probably worked well in the original 2D version, but not in the VR format. As for the story itself, it is amateurish at best. It attempts to get us emotionally involved with a robot family (with a robot kid) in about 5 minutes - and as it for some reason is the case with most of these kind of VR short stories, we're supposed to feel sad by the end of it. We don't, though. There's simply not enough time. It's also obvious that the robots are there in place of "real" (virtual) people because they're easier to render. It doesn't really make sense that they're robots. One of them even cough at one point. So it's sort of interesting technically - but that's it. It's a few years old now, so it's not as impressive as it probably was when it was first released, but it's still a pretty good showcase for their "PresenZ" tech.

Even after 5 years in VR, this was one of the most amazing experiences I've had. I've really been wanting a movie going experience which fully utilizes what VR is capable of. PresenZ looks like the answer to what I've been looking for. This isn't a crappy 360 VR video that you've seen on YouTube and other places. This actually places you in the movie. The only downsides will be getting film makers to adopt it and also the volume size needed for the movie. Only 10 mins or so of video (movie and intro included) required 30 GBs. That's a lot of space to take up for a single application for such a little amount of content. The above aside, I really hope this takes off and we see more VR productions utilizing this technology.

Pretty cool, and I could see myself watching actual movies like this. It's not just a 360 video but actually volumetric. Would love to see more dynamic scenes, meaning a changing environment, and see if the system can cope with that, but this is a neat showcase of characters at least. [b]Pro tip[/b]: Don't try to run this off of a mechanical drive, it'll buffer constantly! A standard SATA SSD worked fine though.

This is probably the best video there is, to show people the difference between volumetric video and regular 360 video (2D or 3D). Although I enjoyed this quality short, and found it to be very immersive, I would rather have seen real human actors. Using robots/CGI blurs the line with games, especially since the environment around the 'actors' (robots) is photogrammetry. I can imagine that some people would just think this a demo of a high-quality game with photorealistic graphics, and to be honest, the difference is not 100% clear to me either. First of all, the environment is digitally (re)created, just like in some games, or, like in VR demos showing locations made with photogrammetry. Parts of the environment that are dynamic (e.g. wooden planks that break into pieces) are very similar looking to geometry models in games. The actors were filmed and then replaced with a digital body (a robot in this case) and their movement looks ultra realistic, much better than game characters made using motion capture of actors, so that's a plus when you compare this short movie with something that was made with a game engine. But I'm curious how this would look with human actors that haven't been replaced with digital avatars. Maybe the tech is not quite ready for that? I still wonder if I will ever see a 'real', full and volumetric movie in VR and how this movie would look? There can't be beautiful cinematic shots with narrow DOF, can there? Because what happens if the viewer moves around the head of the actor and/or changes the focus and looks to the blurry background instead of to the actor? But if you want a glimpse of a possible future for story-telling in VR, then check this out!

This is a very cool experience. It's a bit short (~8 minutes), but it's a great look at what the future of movies in VR could look like. [Mild spoilers ahead] I thought some of the camera transitions were a bit abrupt, and there was one point near the end where the camera was moved high into the sky, which I imagine would freak some people out (fear of heights). I also thought there was a lot of visual aliasing (pixelation). It might just be that my Index headset doesn't have good enough displays, although I was running at 150% supersampling and still noticed it a lot. It's strange because for something pre-rendered, I thought there would be no reason to see any visual artifacts like that. Overall, this is definitely worth the low price for a look at a potential future of media.

Truly amazing immersion! You really get the feeling that you're watching from the centre of the action and even though it's short, it's proper engrossing!! Loved the feeling of depth! So much better than regular 3d movies or other 360 videos i've watched before, I mean nothing has come close to this in terms of Vr video! Thoroughly enjoyed every second of the video and can't wait for more to this story or other projects that show off this tech!

i have a 3080 with a i91100 with 64gb of ram and this thing buffers like it's some dodgy streaming iptv. buffered about every second. the whole way through. lol the end result is worth it. download the demo st and you will see

This is the thing that I was waiting for since I played 'Welcome to Light Fields' from Google in 2018. It is nice to see fully immersed Volumetric Video is possible and real now. It does not have the perfect picture quality like the way that 'Welcome to Light Fields' demo introduced. Though, that was just a single frame. So, it is ok to have some compression or production artifacts and it has still way better picture quality comparing to the other 360 ​​mono or 180 stereoscoping videos that I've seen. I would normally consider this movie as a showcase for a new technology, so I wouldn't want to comment about the story and the filming style. But, It is so complete and better than my expectations that I will drop some notes here about the content as well. First of all the story was good as a short movie, the suprising ending makes you think about the future human life forms and possibilities. The animations, during fight scenes or emotional dialogues, they are almost flawless. Sound and voice acting is ok, as though nothing hurts the experience so far. Except one thing, camera positions and angles change as sudden jumps from one spot to another. For sure, if it was continuous move instead, it would be worse by causing motion sickness. So, the only flaw which I take care of is the lack of consistent transitions between different view angles. And, I assume this is a common problem for movies in VR. I consumed many 360 videos in VR, and some of them were long movies including one starred by Nicolas Cage. And, almost all have this lack of view comfort. They need to find a solution to this problem. I think this shouldn't be requiring another technological step anymore, rather, a new skillset on cinematography. I can imagine some simple solutions should work out for this problem: First, reducing the frequency of camera view changes at lest for the same scene, and keeping the distance between spots and view angle amount as small steps would simply work. Big camera changes should be less often. Yet, it would still be difficult to keep the audience looking targeted point of interest without crazily turning his or her head left and right. Alternatively, they could add some compensating interactivity for the player, such as having the ability of controlling the time as well. Imagine controlling the bullet time effects in the Matrix movie. Even a small range of control in time with pauses or rewinds would make the player engaged and this may eventually help not suffering from uncontrolled disorientations. After all, it is one of the best thing in VR so far.