Virtual reality is moving fast at the BBC. In October last year, we launched BBC VR Hub, a new studio that will spearhead the BBC’s VR production and explore how VR can create real audience impact.
In the last few weeks we have released our first film, Damming the Nile VR, a two-part VR news documentary series exploring the water politics of the famous river. Viewers go on assignment with the BBC News team on a fascinating journey, taking in the Nile’s beautiful sights and dramatic sounds as they travel through canyons and fly above waterfalls. But they also learn about the political tensions that might be behind the world’s first war over water.
Damming the Nile VR was produced in partnership with BBC News, and has been designed as a high quality mobile VR experience and released for both Gear VR in a new app and on YouTube, in part because we wanted the film to be as accessible as possible, something that hasn’t always been the case. Our previous experiments have produced some wonderful experiences, but not everyone has the hardware required to try them out.
That’s why we decided to take some of our top VR experiences out on the road to universities across the country to bring this new technology to the next generation. We created our ‘VR Box’ and took it to Manchester Metropolitan University, Swansea University and Oxford Brookes University to let students try out some VR from the BBC for themselves and get a taste of the future.
One of the experiences they could try was Home – A VR Spacewalk, an interactive VR film inspired by British astronaut Tim Peake’s real-life experiences training with NASA. In the experience, you risk your life on a spacewalk 250 miles above the Earth’s surface. Your task is to make a repair on the outside of the International Space Station, before being confronted with a terrifying emergency situation.
For the students who tried it, the experience was transformative. One student said that it was "pretty amazing" and describing it as "the first and only chance I’ll ever get this close to space". Another said that VR is "definitely a big new field to go and discover", adding that "there’s so much to learn and we’re just at the beginning". Home – A VR Spacewalk launched publicly for the first time recently and is now available to download for free via the Steam Store and the Oculus Store.
The BBC VR Box also featured an interactive VR fairytale, The Turning Forest, currently available for Google Daydream and the Samsung Gear VR. This transports you to a magical, musical forest, where you stare into the eyes of a fantastical creature before embarking on a journey together.
As well as being a beautiful VR spectacle, the Turning Forest also demonstrates the importance of sound in immersive experiences. It was built from the sound up, and features a spatial soundtrack that uses dynamic binaural audio. As you turn your head the sound moves too, creating a thoroughly immersive environment that feels like a real place.
VR Box also showed how you can use VR to step into your favourite TV shows. The Queen Vic Experience enables EastEnders fans to explore Walford’s famous pub, with interactive elements that let you pull a pint, throw darts and play on the piano. You can even spot Den and Angie’s divorce papers if you look carefully enough.
Students also learnt first-hand about working in VR. Producers and specialists from BBC Research & Development, BBC Three and BBC Wales gave talks about working with virtual reality and how it can transform storytelling. And they explained how working at the BBC gives them the opportunity to work on innovative projects that push boundaries, helping them create something truly unique.
For example, BBC Three producer Ian Ravenscroft spoke to students in Oxford and Swansea about a series he produced called Step Inside My Head. The series of short films saw people with different mental health issues use a VR tool called a Google Tilt Brush to ‘paint’ what their condition feels like.
Ian and his team then used an innovative mixed-reality filming technique to capture the painting process – using VR as a film-making technique for the first time for the BBC. The resulting films are beautiful and help give people some understanding of what mental health conditions like borderline personality disorder, psychotic depression and anorexia and bulimia feel like.
The BBC has always sought to innovate to serve current and future audiences, from our first days broadcasting radio in 1922, to introducing colour TV in the Sixties, right through to VR today. Thanks to the early experiments that have taken VR Box on tour, we’ve been able to look at what works and what doesn’t, and to better understand how we can tell stories in this new and exciting medium.
In the future, VR Hub will continue to take the lessons learned from these early experiments to create more moving, engaging and memorable new experiences across a wide range of genres, and help usher this new and emerging medium into the mainstream.
Zillah Watson is Head of BBC VR Hub
