SIF: hands-on with “Doctor Who: The Runaway”, “4 Feet: Blind Date” and much more!

First day at Sandbox Immersive Festival! Do you want to know how has it been? Well, you can bet that I will tell you everything.

Differently from the other times, when I just wrote a mega-post about my experience at an event, this time I will split this summary about the first day in more parts, so that you can read it in a more efficient way 🙂 Ok, let’s start!

Qingdao

The Sandbox Immersive Festival takes place in Qingdao, China.

View of #Qingdao, #China, from my window! Isn't it overly beautiful?@SuzanneBorders where are you??? pic.twitter.com/lsThtiohEG

— TonyVT SkarredGhost (@SkarredGhost) June 24, 2019

Qingdao is an amazing city... the seaside is one of the best I have ever seen… romantic and technological at the same time. It has something magical.

Far from the sea, Qingdao looks like many other Chinese cities. Anyway, it is not as advanced as Beijing or Shanghai, so stuff is a bit cheaper, but at the same time you have the shortcoming that the English language is a mistery here. So you had better staying in the hotel with the other people of the SIF if you don’t want to practice some Mandarin.

The festival

My first impression of the Sandbox Immersive Festival is that it is full of amazing storytelling experiences, full of nice conferences and full of interesting people. In just one day, I have been able to meet people like:

• My friends of the XR Story group in Wechat: Eloi Gerard, Gianluigi Perrone, Rob, Nikk, etc…
• The smart Venture Capitalist Tipatat Chennavasin;
• The journalist Jesse Damiani (he’s an amazing guy, really);
• The winner of the price for best VR experience at Biennale del Cinema di Venezia Chuck Chae;
• The HP superstar Joanna Popper;
• The super-colored and creative Estrella Tse;
• The nice Denise of Veer;
• And many many others.

In one day, I did some crazy networking and I had fun talking with lots of people. It’s been fantastic meeting and hugging with people that I knew only virtually.

The festival is well organized and we all live in a wonderful hotel on the seaside (thanks Eddie and Coco for this). There are only two problems:

1. Booking the experiences is a pain. This is a common problem of all storytelling festivals (Tribeca, SXSW, etc…). Storytelling experiences are quite long, and so only a limited number of slots are available each day to try them, and so only a few people can try them. That’s a pain… the exhibition is not “scalable”. To try some experiences today, I had to lie, cheat and steal like Eddie Guerrero, because using just the official methods it would have been impossible;
2. Volunteers try to be helpful, but their English is limited. So, if you ask something to someone, he will ask for help to the person that knows English better than him/her. Most probably he/she won’t be able to speak with you as well, so in the end, you had better speak some Chinese or to pray saint Google Translate to have what you need.

Regarding the experiences, let me tell you what I’ve tried today (Warning! IT WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS).

Gymnasia

Gymnasia is a 3DOF experience by Felix&Paul Studios and National Film Board Of Canada. From the names of the two studios creating it, you already know it should be a high-quality experience.

And actually it is: you start in this old school gym, and slowly light starts entering through the window. The transition from dark to light is slow, and a bit creepy. It is implemented perfectly: the shading of lights is very well made (I guess they used Unreal) and seems credible. When there is full light, you see that this gym is like part of an abandoned school and everything is falling into pieces. Inside there are some very old basketballs.

Suddenly, you start seeing the shadows of some kids running in the gym. Then, one ball starts to bounce, and so all the others. The shadow of the kids starts practicing basketballs. It is as if you were seeing the memories of the past stories lived in that court. Of course, this is strange and unsettling.

After that, a creepy puppet on a wheelchair enters the gym, another puppet appears on a stage and they start singing a melancholy song thanks to the piano that starts playing itself. After they finish, the experience ends.

I’m a simple man, and so I have no idea what it does mean. The “plot” has really no sense for me… I think it is stuff that only super-intelligent creatives understand. For all us average Joes, it is like the experience is too short and misses another piece that explains what you have just seen… because currently, the first reaction that you have after you finish watching it is:

Apart from these misunderstandings, the experience is a very high-quality one. The light effects, the shading, the 3D models, everything is beautiful. And the mix of the old environment with creepy things happening is really able to foster in you a big sense of discomfort: everything looks creepy, and this uncertainty about what is going to happen makes you fear the future. I loved this feature of Gymnasia more than everything else.

My final opinion is: beautiful, but it should be longer.

Buddha VR

I’ve watched the final 30% of Buddha VR, an 8K movie by Funiq Studio. I can’t tell much about the plot, because I missed 70% of the movie and it was all in mandarin (as I’ve told you, I had to do compromises to try some experiences today), but I can tell you that:

• Watching a 8K movie on a 2K-per-eye-headset like the HP Reverb was impressive. Really. The resolution is so high, that if the proportion of the objects that you see were good, you could almost believe them as true. I was astonished;
• It seemed really well made. A bit crude maybe, but for sure intriguing even if I couldn’t understand a single thing;
• The fact that you don’t impersonate a person, but an inanimate object (a precious head of Buddha) is quite original. And this also creates some interesting reactions in you when for instance people touch you (it is creepy that they are touching your face… but actually they’re just touching an object) or when you see yourself in a mirror (you see that you’re embodying an object… how weird!)

It was short for me, but nice.

Last Whispers

Last Whispers is a 3DOF experience about lost languages. Slowly all countries are trying to educate people to only learn the official language, and while this is great for education, it makes people start forgetting the old dialects. This means that a lot of languages are getting lost. This is an incredible problem that is leading to the impoverishment of the culture of this world.

Last Whispers tries to sensibilize people about this topic. And does this putting you inside an oniric black&white vision of the Earth, with some points blinking on it and emitting the sounds of the language that is going to die in that region.

While I loved the idea of preserving lost languages, I have to say that I found the experience pretty boring.

4 feet: Blind Date

4 Feet: Blind Date is maybe the best experience that I’ve tried today.

It is the story of a disabled teenage girl that wants to have the same sex life as all the other girls of the same age. In this 20-minutes long 360 video, you follow the adventures of Juana from when she gets a match on Tinder to when the appointment with him finishes. The story is narrated through a series of flashbacks that start during the various stages of the date and that let you understand all that happened even before the date itself (when the date happened, how she travelled to the place, etc…).

This way you see all the problems that a disabled teenage girl has: people looking at her, cars that risk running on her, the difficulty of getting on and off a bus, and especially the inquietude of this girl when going on a date with a guy that doesn’t know she is on a wheelchair. Being a teenager is already hard and everyone thinks that he/she is awful in those years. Imagine what can think a girl with physical problems.

But what I loved is that all of this is not narrated through compassion: she is a strong girl and just want to have a normal life, and have a sexual life. She goes to the date anyway, even if she’s afraid. She answers to little kid curious about her chair saying that she’s on the wheelchair because she’s a robo-assassin. It is a story of a courage, of fighting against the physical limitations. And the fact that it narrates the theme of the sexual life of disabled people is also very interesting.

The movie is not in first-person and is also original because it mixes cartoon elements to the video shot with a 360 camera. It’s very melancholy, but also ironic. It’s somewhat childish but also erotic. It’s a very well made experience, that remains inside you after you have tried it. It was really great.

Doctor Who: The Runaway

I was excited to try “Doctor Who: The Runaway” because it is actually a famous experience in the VR ecosystem. After I have experienced it, I have mixed feelings about it.

The experience narrates the story of Doctor Who that has in her “office” a strange cute alien creature that she wants to help return to his planet. If you fail in this mission, the creature will become a black hole and destroy all the galaxy. If you succeed, everyone will be happy.

While you are in this mission, some difficulties will happen: some of them will be solved by Doctor Who herself, while in others you should help her by using a special “pen” that can attract objects that she gives you during this experience.

I don’t want to spoil you much since I guess that many of you will want to see it when it will come out for all major headsets (Cosmos included) in September.

What I can say is that the graphics are very nice: it is a 6 DOF experience, real-time rendered. Graphics are cartoonish and very pleasant to be seen. I found the alien creature very cute. I also appreciated the attention on some visual details during the various interactions.

The mood is good: Doctor Who is super-positive, super-active and this gives you good vibes throughout all the experience, even when you have troubles to solve. The fact that you have the impression that this experience can’t finish bad makes you play in a very relaxed way and this makes the experience really pleasant. Good vibes for everyone.

At the same time, this is its shortcomings: at no time, the troubles seemed real troubles to me, because I had always the impression that there was no possibility of “dying” in this experience, and this made it a bit unrealistic and unmotivating. There some interactive moments, where you have to move some stuff with the magic “pen”, but the interactions are always very simple and feel just there because someone has read in a book that you have to add interactivity to make a storytelling content more immersive. What I want to say is that interactions are mostly simple and useless, and don’t fit well in the story.

I think that it can be a very good experience for kids. It’s well-done, cartoon-like, short (20 minutes), simple and always positive. It’s perfect in this sense.

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And that’s it for the experiences tried today! If you like my summaries of my journeys, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter. so not to miss my reports on the next things that I will try at SIF!