It feels like I’ve been transported into a scene straight out of a science fiction movie.
I’m walking around on a giant centrifuge in space, which I can see the outlines of at the edge of my vision. Beyond it, I see the planet we're orbiting. The pathways I walk on stretch endlessly above and below me, giving me the feeling I’m in an absolutely massive structure. Huge hologram-like characters, each 10 stories tall, occasionally materialize alongside the path to talk to me and the dozen people also on this journey.
Those fellow travelers aren’t computer-generated characters; they’re real humans. We’re all walking around wearing VR headsets in a shared virtual reality space in Las Vegas that can best be described as an amusement park ride for the visual cortex. Everyone else in the group sees the same scene, each from slightly different perspectives as they shuffle around freely.
Interstellar Arc, Vegas’s latest immersive attraction in the city’s Area15 entertainment district, is a stark reimagining of virtual reality within larger physical spaces. The narrative adventure utilizes recent advances in VR, resulting in a forward-looking technological undertaking that likely wouldn’t have been possible even a few years ago.
And as VR technology gets lighter, faster, and more advanced, experiences like these may help drive the future of an industry that’s struggled to find its footing in the mainstream after more than a decade on the commercial market. I went to Las Vegas to step inside Interstellar Arc myself and find out if it might help push virtual reality forward.
Blast Off
The project is the brainchild of Felix & Paul Studios, helmed by cofounders Paul Raphaël, Félix Lajeunesse, and Stéphane Rituit. Raphaël and Lajeunesse spent years as a traditional filmmaking duo, but had already begun to transition to more immersive storytelling formats when they demoed the Oculus Rift headset soon after it hit the market in 2013. They were sold immediately.
“We decided that this was the future of our lives, and that we were going to dedicate ourselves to telling stories in VR,” Raphaël says.
Raphaël says F&P developed the first VR camera that could film in 360 degrees and was involved in a number of early VR experiences. The team worked with the likes of Cirque du Soleil, Steven Spielberg, and even the Obama White House, earning several prime-time Emmy awards along the way. But their work in outer space stood out.