Where is my head ?

Invent E.xtreme Virtuality.

At the bottom of a bag ? I can’t explain my slowness in any other way.

It’s so easy to have ideas that sound brilliant.
By the way – they are absolutely brilliant ideas.

As everyone is nice to me, no one contradicts me – and sometimes you even tell me yourself that these ideas are extraordinary, well, as usual, I take the opportunity to tell myself that: it’s okay, it’s okay. What if I finished my level on PVZ?

So yesterday, I was daydreaming about Virtual Reality spectators playing the Washtub Farce again.

Concretely, what does that mean?
It means that I have in my head several ways to make the spectators play in Virtual Reality, and that I’m not always clear on this subject.

My first way is to place them in extravagant places that will move in an unanticipated way.
In this way, we will have a largely extreme experience from a physical point of view. And an unobstructed view of the stage.

The second way, which came to me naturally but which I didn’t think about on its own, is to place them in the artists – in the artists’ avatars.
It is in this way that the movements and possibilities given to the virtual spectator/player are worked on. – Okay – not just in this case – wait a minute, I’m clarifying point by point. Let’s say that today I clarify the point: I am a spectator who plays in Virtual Reality.
If I want the spectators to replay Jacquinot’s Farce, I have to have the three places – the husband, the wife, the mother-in-law – that will be playable.
When? – when it’s the worst, i.e. at the moment of the fall.

If I want to offer this game to one, two, or three people, it clearly means that I also have with me the programming of the three characters in NPC – when they are not chosen. The husband and wife are not going to disappear if only one person chooses to be the mother-in-law.
It’s starting to cost the Earth, my idea – I know. I never hid the fact that it was an extravagant price.

The playability of all virtual experiences will be in Phase 2 – when Altair earns enough to afford a whole team of game developers.

So, I’m going ahead and not dealing with what I don’t master.

I put my viewer/player in his harness. He chooses to be the woman. He is alone. He sees the scene – it’s the set. He sees the scene as an actor sees it – I think that looking for realistic illusion by building around the spectator a “pure set” like a video game set is not so fun. Playing on several levels seems to me much more destabilizing for the spectator, and allows Altair to really stand out from the games. We’ll play with them – we won’t play at being a VR video game company.

So my guy finds himself virtually on stage.
He’s actually hooked into his harness – which allows him to take real support and walk around – without risking anything.
Next to him, he sees the non-playing characters – the two other characters in the scene: the husband and the mother-in-law.

He hears them – sound is imperative.
If he does nothing, he will experience the exact experience of the actress falling into her tub of dirty water.

But the actress does not fall into a tub of dirty water.
Whereas the spectator/player does. He will really feel as if he is falling into the tub, full of water: so the idea is to create the illusion of falling into the water, of losing his footing – no support underneath him, being splashed – and that it slips, he can’t hold on to the rim of the tub.
He hears himself begging her husband – that’s the actress’s voice – and he can’t hold onto the edge of the tub.
It will be necessary to replace the digitized body of the actress, by the virtualized body of the spectator > so if he doesn’t look in the right direction, he won’t see the husband topping the list of things to do for the house, yes darling, I signed your list.

If he’s not looking in the right direction, he won’t see the husband’s hand either, finally, which will help him to get out of this impasse.
So he stays there.

So I need a program that mutes the sound as soon as the viewer gets out of actions that are compatible with what is being told.
That complicates the programming of the game a bit, doesn’t it?
But if we don’t do that, we’ll get the tons of critics that are currently raining down on Cyberpunk.

We can overcome this difficulty with positioning markers. If the markers are activated, the sound continues.
If they’re not activated, you go to a splendid sound of a cow roaring in its lake and bang, sunk, you’ve lost – do you want to try again ?

Do you follow me? I’m boiling – and boiling under a bag is not as funny as you think it is.

I’m taking over – I’m the spectator, I chose: the girl.
Okay. I put on the VR harness and helmet.
I find myself slightly hoisted up –
Altair launches the game. The game I chose throws me into a vat.
Altair is a bad kid. Altair cheats.
The harness cables adjust so that I find myself upside down, feet up, until I can get out of the water, so I have to move around to get back in the right direction.
I see nothing, only dirty water and maybe my hands beating.
I get to the surface.
The cables being handled by the Altair’s dirty kids prevent me from being stable – I have nothing under my feet.
I open my eyes, I’m at the water’s edge: I see eddies and the edges of the tank. I hear the water and me struggling in it.
Are you still with me? For the moment, it seems to me it’s okay.

Depending on how I managed to get back to the surface, I can see my husband above the tank.
Or not.
I’m going to hear him.
I would need a spatialized sound. That’s easy. No ? But yes – I don’t want virtual reality for grandmothers.

Either I move to see who’s talking – and then I’m okay with the scene.
Or I move and I can’t see anything – I went the wrong way.
Either I don’t move, I see nothing and I’m subjected to the action.

By the time Jacquinot’s list is finished, I have time to be in the right place. The moment the actress begs him to help me – I will see positioning markers appear for my hands.
If I don’t understand, too bad.
So I will try to access these markers.
They have to be visible for a limited time – if I’m perfect, everything will be fine, and in the end, Jacquinot’s hand will lift me out of the water – and Altair will lift me up sharply, to bring me down gently to earth.

If I don’t make it, the program deletes the original soundtrack – we can keep the husband’s fake complaints – and replace the sound with water sounds.

Thus : in a limited time, the time of the scene – either I sink – Altair virtually drowns me with my gaze – or I am saved.
So I played the scene – and lived the scene – and experienced the scene like an actor, still seeing the backstage, the ramps of the spotlights.

Here’s how we could present the game: you have 45 seconds to get out of the tank.
The spectator lives the scene virtually – but it is the spectator who realizes “his end”. depending on him.
There are not 150 possible endings – I will stop exaggerating – succeed or fail seems to me sufficient.
If it fails – Altair offers the possibility to try again, of course – like when you’re allowed to play pinball again.

I’m on an ultra-short action sequence – which means that almost anyone can try it – and so we can sell a double ticket: the show and the vat play.
It’s a VR mode that you can’t do at home: that’s good, because that way you get into Altair.

I’m not saying that we have to do sequences like this every time, but that we have to be able to offer different accesses to Virtual Reality.

Active scenes require a lot of work beforehand – even more important than when it occurred to me to spend 5 minutes of Tango “in” the loop of the dancer’s shoe.

So, my head ? I must have lost it watching Magritte – but I found Altair as a result.

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Featured Image : by Rudy – And then I may have lost my head I don’t know where, but in the meantime I found my twin sister, and she is really beautiful my twin sister! She’s even more beautiful than her twin sister, and I’m not jealous, I’m really, really, delighted 🙂 ❤