Google – Daydream VR Impact

Challenge

Confirm the use of immersive technologies for good, to enable members of Stay Up Late charity, specifically for people with learning disabilities, to gain confidence for more social activities.

Use Case

Working with members of local learning disabilities charity Stay Up Late, create a series of 360° films of entertainment venues. These would provide pre-visit awareness and understanding of layout and a sense of presence, what it feels like to go there for an event beforehand, to increase confidence and likelihood of attending in the real world. Stay Up Late members were also provided with workshops and training to learn how to use the cameras, plan a location shoot, edit and view the films they were creating.

Proof of Concept

Make Real worked with Stay Up Late to carry out a test shoot with a simple Samsung Gear 360 video camera (4K) to film a venue to view the footage back through a Google Cardboard mobile VR headset. We then asked a number of the Stay Up Late members, who had not visited the venue, to watch the film before attending a gig there at a later date. Some members who attended the gig were not present to view the 360° video prior to visiting. We then asked the members for their feedback whether the film enabled them to feel more comfortable whilst at the venue, having previously virtually visited it. The resounding positive reaction encouraged the team to reach out to Google Daydream VR Impact team to provide more hardware.

Hardware

The longer, full videos were filmed using the Odyssey Google Jump 360° camera, consisting of an array of 16 GoPro cameras. The data from these was downloaded from each camera and uploaded to the cloud for stitching via the Google Jump Assembler application. The resulting spherical video files stitched together were then edited, post-processed and deployed via Google YouTube (5K 360° video) and Google Poly (4K 360° still photos) for viewing on a variety of VR headsets.

Impact

Over the course of 6 months, Make Real and Stay Up Late were able to work with 6 local venues to gain access for filming; out of hours so a number of locations within each venue as an empty space could be shot, followed by a return visit to film the same locations “live”. The two videos were then provided as a film to provide a calm, environmental awareness experience, allowing learning and understanding of layout, correlation of key areas between one another, followed by a full sensory experience to provide a realistic representation of what visiting the venue would feel like.

The venues that enabled access were: 1. The Old Market, Hove 2. The Brighton Centre 3. Komedia, Brighton 4. The Brighton Dome 5. Loading Bar // C:/Side_Quest 6. The Concord 2

The Google DayDream VR Impact team then visited Make Real with Stay Up Late to film a documentary about the day in the life of one of the members, incorporating a behind-the-scenes look at the venue filming an film editing process, and the member viewing the resulting film and then visiting the venue to attend a gig in real life.