Designing Presence in Immersive Reality

Michel Reilhac Experiencing a film in Virtual Reality is by nature
a completely different experience from one viewer to the next since
each is free to choose where to look around the 360 scape and how
to interact or not. This creates a challenging new dilemma for the
VR writer or director: how can their carefully designed story
experience unfold as they have envisioned if the viewer is entirely
free to catch or ignore the meaningful parts of the 360 environment
? There are 2 kinds of immersive authors/directors: those who try
and force the viewer to see what they want them to see (like in
flat films) and those who let go and leave the viewers to their own
serendipitous discovery of their story world.But the one thing we
all need to learn is how can we include the viewer inside our VR
immersive storie s since , like in a game , he/she is at the center
of the filmed VR environment and at the heart of its action. How do
we script the viewer’s presencesince he/she is an essential part of
the narrative flow but in a totally unpredictable way? This
presentation is about my current research in creating a practical
methodology that defines presence in an immersive story world. I
have found 9 ways of being "here" in VR. There are probably more.
Knowing them will help us building coherence in all immersive
experiences.