Adapting to Virtual Space: The Possibilities of VR Cinema

If there’s a silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that we’ve finally adapted to virtual space. In 2020 video calling became normal and 2021 was the year of live-streamed events. 2022 could be the year that VR cinema takes off.

Having a nice, clean cinema entirely to yourself is one of the perks of moviegoing in virtual reality.

Going to the cinema can be fun, but it can also be horrible. When I was a kid, there was more to it, a kind of ritual. There was a supporting feature, then an intermission when the lights would come back on and the kiosk in the cinema itself would briefly open; all these things built a sense-memory of anticipation. 

These days, the experience starts with a long journey to an understaffed warehouse, a conveyor belt into the multiplex, a queue for a bucket of Coke and then four years of adverts. The ritual has been re-ordered, commodified and reduced. When we poke at it, the cobwebs of nostalgia part revealing sticky floors and chromatic aberration.

VR (virtual reality) cinema has the potential to strip out the inconvenience, risk and disappointment, and leave us with what matters; the ability to watch spectacular films on huge screens, in cavernous virtual spaces, ‘with’ our friends. The stuff that triggers the old pleasure centres and nothing more.

Fortunately, the tech is at a tipping point. It may not be long before we’re able to buy tickets to visit an Odeon, Vue or a facsimile of our favourite independent cinema in virtual reality.

VR cinema has the potential to … leave us with what matters: the ability to watch spectacular films on huge screens, in cavernous virtual spaces, ‘with’ our friends.

I’ve been writing about, building and studying VR since the early 90s. However, it’s only very recently – the last five years – that consumer-level VR has been worth a diddley-damn. We’ve gone from tethered headsets with external sensors, connected to high-spec gaming PCs, to the Oculus Quest 2, a wireless, standalone device with experimental 120Hz playback at (almost) 4K resolution.

With Facebook money behind all this, the push into the mainstream is inevitable.

And before we go any further, that’s the minimum you’ll need to access cinema in VR: a virtual reality headset. It could be something basic but functional like an Oculus Go (£100-£150 refurbished) or a device with bells, whistles, floral decoration and sequins, like a Valve Index (£1,119 last time we checked).

Looking into the Guardian of Forever, we can see a few possible futures for VR cinema. A couple are already with us, one more is nearly there and then it all gets a bit fuzzy. We have a thing or two to say about where cinema chains should be investing their money, though.

Players Gonna Play

There are already a dozen or so video player apps for VR headsets. Some authentically replicate the sense of being in a cinema. By that, we mean sitting in a dark theatre, with sound so loud you can feel it in your spleen and a screen so large you don’t always know where to look. Cinema should be immersive, wrapping you in a cocoon of light and noise, and VR can already do that.

I’ve watched a couple of movies in VR alone (for the record, Journey To The Center Of The Earth and The Walk). It was fun, but nowhere near as much fun as watching the entire Indiana Jones tetralogy in a photorealistic vintage cinema with other people. Immersion is only part of the experience. Cinema should be social.

Me and my partner, settling down for a night in our luxurious apartment, watching the latest blockbuster.

Some of the video player apps enable you to stream movies from a PC or laptop to more than one headset in sync. More headsets equals more people. The two I keep coming back to are Virtual Desktop and Skybox Video Player. Fair warning; they both have issues. The first hurdle is playing back movies on a PC. Skybox does this by local video files, either from your PC or headset. You can rip them from your DVD collection, but it’s a faff and, weirdly, not strictly legal in the UK.

It starts to get more complicated as you stream from your computer to multiple headsets. It’s fine if everyone’s tech-savvy and connected to the same network – but not so dandy if you’re troubleshooting on the fly instead of watching Avatar in a virtual IMAX. With the slightly more intuitive Virtual Desktop, you can play a movie on your PC and mirror the display on a VR headset. If you’re streaming a film from a video-on-demand service like Amazon Prime, use Firefox as your browser to sidestep DRM issues – or you’ll just get a blank screen. A bigger problem is that there’s no multi-user support.

All of this suggests that VR cinema isn’t quite ready for muggles. What’s required is an app built for shared cinema that’s end-user-friendly; a dedicated cinema in VR. Fortunately, they already exist. The best in this class is called Bigscreen, and it has all the features required, just not all in the same place. 

Golden Ticket

Like Skybox, Bigscreen lets you watch locally stored movies in vivid, VR recreations of cinema interiors. It also allows you to mirror your PC screen in a VR cinema, like Virtual Desktop. More crucially – you can easily invite other Oculus, Vive or Windows Mixed Reality users into your cinema by sharing a room code, across the Internet. 

3D movies really come to life in virtual reality – though pickings are pretty slim.

On any given day, there are dozens of public channels teeming with people from around the world. This, of course, sounds fantastic. Trouble is, streaming commercial movies from personal servers over the Internet is stuttery, glitchy and, bluntly, almost certainly illegal. Bigscreen’s best experience comes from the content it provides. The app has built-in, fully licensed TV and movie channels. In a few minutes of channel-hopping we discovered The Lovely Bones, Once Upon A Time In America and Bullit all playing in public rooms powered by Pluto TV and others.

Here’s where Bigscreen gets interesting. The app also includes some on-demand, premium movie rentals too. Full disclosure; these are billed as ‘single-player’ only (though the blurb says ‘social rentals are coming soon’). So far, Bigscreen has deals with Paramount and Funimation which, in the UK, translates to half a dozen Tom Cruise movies, Star Trek: Nemesis, some rom-coms and a lot of anime. One of the best experiences on the app is Top Gun in 3D because any 3D movie in virtual reality is better than at the cinema; somehow crisper and more realistic. 

It’s a great experience and Bigscreen is nearly there, but not quite. The real letdown is the lack of films for rent. The app leaves you with four less-than-ideal choices. 

This brings us to a category of apps that are also nearly there, but in a different way.

One of Bigscreen’s big strengths is a big choice of environments, from vintage theatres to campfire cosiness.

Both Netflix and Amazon Prime have apps for VR headsets that, to put it frankly, are just not that good. Both offer access to the entire streaming catalogue of each service in environments that are functional and… that’s about it.

The Netflix app places you in a cosy cabin in front of a big TV – while the Amazon Prime app switches from a cartoony town square to a crude cinema setting.

Neither environment is as immersive as Bigscreen (or the other video players I’ve mentioned). There are no social features. There’s no real incentive to use these apps instead of your TV or laptop. They can do better.

So, Amazon and Netflix have the movies, but poor VR apps. Bigscreen has all the features required to do cinema in VR, but it’s lacking in content. You can probably guess where I’m going with this. If Bigscreen had the backing of a Netflix, Amazon or Disney, it could be VR’s killer video app.

Virtual Real-Estate

I said there was a fuzzier possibility – and this one is a little more out there. Cinema chains make money – and lose money – in a variety of ways. One of the ways they lose money is in real estate; the bricks and mortar they own, the maintenance of buildings and equipment, the staff they employ, furniture, facilities, fixtures and fittings. What if cinemas built in VR? What if Odeon or Vue built their own multiplexes in the metaverse?  

Cinema chains could reinvent the wheel, work with software developers and build their own apps. Or, they could work with existing apps that already contain the features they need; social interaction, shared telepresence, streaming media and payment systems. Bigscreen is an obvious choice – but there are players with more clout on this stage.

Facebook’s Venues, currently in early access, is an evolution of the older Oculus Venues app for sporting, music and comedy events. The technology wasn’t quite ready for primetime and the app didn’t quite take off.

But the new Venues has all the social features you might expect to see in a virtual cinema app. You can access events in progress through a multiplex-style hub, with doors leading off into separate theatres. The video streaming, communication and presence tools are advanced too, with voice chat and customisable avatars.

Facebook, Microsoft and others are investing in metaverses; multi-user spaces with potential for virtual shops and cinemas as well as gaming and events.

Microsoft has a more open approach, with AltspaceVR. It’s a multi-user, social and world-building space that hosts conferences, live streams and events, including movie nights. Users have already used it to stage independent film festivals and even a special Cannes event during COVID. There are other popular contenders in this space (Rec Room is the most notable rival), but AltspaceVR is growing rapidly and is aimed at a more grown-up market.

A Cineworld or Everyman theatre in the corner of Bigscreen, Facebook Venues or AltspaceVR could be the saviour that VR cinema is looking for. Not now, but maybe next year or the year after. The issue, as ever, will come down to vision; a desire from the industry to invest in new ways of doing old things.