Our world is undergoing profound change.
Science and technology are transforming
our lives with dizzying speed.
Astonishing innovations are ushering in
a new era of opportunity.
The high-tech revolution is fueling
creativity around the globe,
inspiring visionary solutions.
So, open your eyes and get ready
for an amazing journey to 2050.
To dream the future.
(dramatic music)
The need for diversion is part of human nature.
Today, entertainment is everywhere.
The technologies invading our lives
are revolutionizing our leisure time.
Entertainment is moving in lots of different
areas, at the moment,
and what's interesting is we see all the movies we made.
We saw these games we made,
but then we see a whole new realm of entertainment
that's starting to come up.
Virtual reality entertainment.
No!
Dramatic changes are coming,
and fast.
Now, with this new media platforms and capabilities
how do you take a piece of all of that
and just make another medium that's at least
as good as all of the others,
but could take you to a place that none
of the others can take you.
Our future entertainment will
fire all our senses,
our curiosity,
our imagination.
It will erase boundaries between the virtual and the real.
We'll be able to interact with our favorite heroes,
and enjoy totally new experiences.
We've gotten to the point with technology
where, in terms of the appearance,
you can't tell who's real and who's digital.
With technology, and real-time technology,
and video games, anything is possible.
It's more about what's in here that you can communicate.
(speaking in a foreign language)
Everyone's looking for a presence.
To really feel you are in a virtual world.
Not just a kind of film in 360 degrees.
Star Wars is one universe that I could imagine
still being part of popular culture 50 or even 100 years,
but in a very, very, different form than it is today.
These visionaries will take us to worlds
our ancestors never could've imagined.
A break from the routine.
A bit of light-hearted fun.
Man has always sought entertainment.
We know Egyptians were playing board games
in 400 B.C.
Theater came of age in Ancient Greece.
In Rome, Titus inaugurated the Colosseum
which held 50,000 spectators.
In the Middle Ages, knights jousted and troubadours sang.
France's Louis XIV brought fun and games to Versailles.
Theater, ballet, fireworks.
Soon, amusement parks were open to the masses.
Workers, now, had free time for leisure.
In the 1890s, cinema took center stage.
Then, the small screen invaded people's homes.
The digital era brought another revolution,
video games.
In 1972, a young American created Pong for arcades.
When Nintendo added a console,
Super Mario conquered the world.
Now, almost every game is played on every screen.
We love to entertain ourselves,
and the next big thing is virtual reality.
In virtual reality, you're, generally,
wearing a headset,
and from there you're placed in a virtual world.
A world that's created.
And you can move around and take a look,
and see what's going on around you.
VR is like a mad dream come true.
We're thrust into a hyper-real space in three dimensions.
It's a sensation that's hard to imagine.
You know, it's really hard to show people
what's it's like to be in virtual reality
without having them try it for themselves.
Filming you in the green screen studio
is just the best way we've found to help
everyone else understand what it's like to be in VR.
The intense immersion heightens
our senses to the breaking point.
Oh!
Oh my goodness, these guys are so cool.
Look behind you, Kyra.
(whale whistles)
(laughing)
Japan has long been a video game innovator.
Here, the company Bandai, is pioneering
the virtual worlds of tomorrow.
Their Project i Can, is a one of a kind laboratory
for VR activities.
(screaming)
(laughing)
Users are pushed beyond their comfort zone
into extreme sensations,
and breathtaking experiences.
(speaking in a foreign language)
My name is Jyunichiro Koyama.
I'm 49.
With virtual reality you can push back boundaries
while having fun.
I'd really like to develop that aspect.
Please, come here.
As you can see, the whole system is apparent.
That black object is the cat.
Who's going first?
You?
Very well.
Let's go.
VR participants must dress for the part.
Sensors allow infrared cameras to track their movement.
Add a helmet, and the adventure begins.
(speaking in a foreign language)
Without all these accessories
you lose your bearings.
You wouldn't be able to walk on this wooden plank.
Though you can't see your body,
you can visualize the hands and feet
and move around in the space,
and know when you grab something.
And that's a very important process.
Everything is apparent.
The players see the black mattress,
the wooden plank,
and they can move around the room.
We did wonder whether we should show all this or not.
It might seem weird, but to move around this
virtual world successfully,
people first need to grasp the real space
to reassure themselves.
We've arrived.
Come now be brave.
I'll wait here for you.
You must save the little cat.
(screams)
Take it slowly.
Be careful.
If you fall, you're dead.
(speaking in a foreign language)
Don't tell me that.
(speaking in a foreign language)
When our sight is deprived of reality,
It's immediately compensated because our brain
only believes what it sees.
So, when we see something other than reality,
we embrace it readily.
If you're wearing a helmet,
aurally-immersed, hearing nothing of reality,
then you really buy into the reality on offer.
(speaking in a foreign language)
Come on.
I can't.
Maybe it's impossible.
(speaking in a foreign language)
I didn't think visual stimulation
would heighten our feelings so much.
Like the taste for adventure,
or the pleasure of playing.
People who are quite reserved in everyday life
have magnified reactions in virtual reality.
In this context, you can awaken a part of yourself
you never knew about.
Someone very quiet, for example, can start shouting,
or express themselves exuberantly.
He might laugh out loud, or even, get annoyed.
(speaking in a foreign language)
We derive pleasure from illusion,
pure pleasure.
I know that today we paint it in techno-scientific colors,
but if you scratch the surface a little,
under the very learned, erudite motives,
there is, simply, the almost childlike pleasure
of being in a situation of confusion,
of no longer knowing who's alive,
who's imitating the living.
It's rather poetic.
In 2050, the sensation of total immersion
will let us escape in the blink of an eye.
To rouse the senses even further,
jackets, gloves, and backpacks studded with sensors
magnify physical sensations.
Playing with our senses is precisely the aim
of the first futuristic amusement parks.
Sky Circus in Tokyo is a pioneer of the genre.
Here, VR helmets are everywhere,
and more advanced VR rides are designed to be shared.
In 2050, we'll continue to have fun together.
Sharing sensations we can barely imagine today.
The Void is a virtual reality world
promising fantastic adventures.
Participants play in a barn stuffed with high-tech toys,
where decorations come alive.
First thing, is that you want to allow
people to understand that have real agency in the world.
So, that you reach out and something happens.
You look and something happens.
You move close to something, the audio changes.
You understand that you are in a three dimensional
relationship to the audio, to the sound space
seems already very interesting.
And you can do that in the real world,
and in an immersive sound space,
but then you don't also have the visions.
Science fiction says we will, literally,
plug ourselves into video games,
and experience nerve-wracking situations.
Her heart rate is rising.
Keep her in play.
(speaking in a foreign language)
I think, sometimes, we need to step
back from everything these tools arouse in us,
of this overflow of entertainment,
a video of consumption.
Of pointless entertainment in a way.
And maybe we'll focus on the entertainment
that we need to really recharge our batteries.
But what if technology could soothe us?
Some dream of a virtual reality that connects us with nature
for a new kind of country walk.
We wanted to create an experience for people
in the forest that was unexpected.
My name is Robin McNicholas.
I'm 37 years old.
I see the mixed reality experiences
as a big part of the future.
My interest with virtual reality comes from,
probably, growing up in the 80s
when it was promised to us.
At the time, there were all kinds of fascinating
sci-fi films that promised these artificial universes
that you could engage in.
I remember with my brother I'd sit with him
and we'd create a world where we had
an imego, and we'd put a blanket over the top
and we'd try and simulate this world.
And back then, and even now,
the art of it is putting the imagination back on the viewer.
The idea was that the forest would play
a big part of that too.
So, people, just the crunching of the leaves
under their feet,
the fact that they sit on a wooden tree stump,
and just that they can take in the extra sensory things
such as the smells of the forest, and birds, and so on.
You are invited to see the forest
through the eyes of four of its creatures.
A gnat, a dragonfly, a frog, and an owl.
Robin's team scanned a forest,
and then, freely reinterpreted the data they collected.
The experience is closer to an acid trip
than a biology class.
The project, In the Eyes of the Animal,
is loosely based on science,
but there's lots of artistic license in there.
The idea came very naturally from mainly
visiting the space, and taking in the environment.
But then, there's kind of theatrics.
There's design.
There's, obviously, real-time technology,
and multi-sensory inputs that all work together
to create In the Eyes of the Animal.
What can you see now?
Is this like a fly?
Well, done.
Oh, yeah.
(screams)
We wanted the audio to work on a physical level
and we discovered the sub-pack.
It's a sub-bass that vibrates through your body,
and so you get to feel the music.
It's the kind of resonance that you experience
when you're standing next to a speaker at a club,
but, in this case, you're in the woodland.
It's so critical and it does help create atmosphere.
It creates a real sense of narrative as well.
As abstract as that narrative might be.
(electronic hooting)
What we're interested in is sparking more imagination
and causing a chain reaction.
And that's what we're about.
We want people to engage with nature,
and we want people to engage with
alternative ideas,
and we want people to feel the world around them
in different ways.
We see virtual reality and augmented reality
as stepping stones to a mixed reality where
the line between the virtual and the real
are totally blurred.
Welcome back.
That was fantastic!
So, that's the future, is it?
It is the future.
(laughing)
Thank you for that.
You're very welcome.
(speaking in a foreign language)
All these new visualization possibilities
are without doubt a source of pleasure that
human beings have never known.
Even in the weirdest most flamboyant,
surreal representations.
Virtual reality forces us to rethink
our relationship with screens.
The helmet will give us more and more power
to intervene directly in parallel realities.
It's a future that's already here with Fove
an eye-tracking device that enables paralyzed children
to play piano simply by moving their eyes.
By 2050, it's likely this technology
will be available to all.
We won't be limited to realities dreamed up by others.
Soon, we'll enjoy creating our own virtual worlds.
That's the mission of Unity
a revolutionary game platform.
Timoni West and Greg Patterson are two of its VR designers.
Creating directly in VR is, actually,
one of the most compelling experiences.
My name is Timoni West,
and I'm the principal designer at Unity Labs.
I think that VR gives us the opportunity
to create our own worlds.
Right now, creating VR content involves
you looking at three dimensional flattened version
on a 2D screen of something that's probably life size.
So, you're seeing something very small
that in real life is probably, actually, quite large.
So, being able to, actually, go into virtual reality
and set up your scene is much more like, say, staging
a play or a movie set where you can actually go in
and see things how they'll look.
So, we're working on a tool codename Project: Carte Blanche
that's designed for consumers to be able to just
put on a headset and get a bunch of different assets
from the assets store and be able to create their own
worlds and own games in virtual reality very easily.
[Electronic Voice] Okay, let's get started.
Here's a few different worlds you can build.
Pick your favorite.
The medieval, please.
(speaking in foreign language)
There's no need to code anything.
It all functions as simply as a card game.
My name's Greg Madison.
I'm 37.
And I'm trying to let everyone live their
own reality in the same world.
In our room, when we were children,
a cardboard box could be a castle, stones,
soldiers, et cetera.
Limitless imagination.
It'd be great if I could recreate that with Carte Blanche.
These are the various categories.
This is character, for example.
We press it to check the elasticity.
It looks pretty convincing.
I really feel like the card is wiggling
at the end of my finger.
Now, if I turn it, I can grab something
from the character category.
Like a killer whale, and the effects here,
I'll put a spotlight right next to him.
In virtual reality, we manipulate something
that doesn't exist.
That's exactly what we do with magic.
I used to be a magician and illusionist.
To create an illusion,
you don't just rely on what you see,
but also on what you hear and touch.
What we call haptic returns.
All these coherent sensations allow
the illusion to be created.
What I'm trying to do is quite simply
to make my interfaces with cardboard,
sticky tape, and wire.
It might seem pretty do it yourself,
but the aim isn't something beautiful,
it's something you can feel,
something you can manipulate to understand
the interaction.
The sound it produces.
The feedback from our fingertips.
We'll add a character, for example.
You see the object, put it down, and it appears.
It's almost magical.
You really feel immersed.
You're not just playing the game,
you're in the world, you're involved in the world,
and you can interact with it.
How will we handle interaction with
virtual worlds when synthetic images pop up on command
absolutely anywhere?
Augmented reality is fun and addictive.
Remember Pokemon Go?
In 2050, hunting little monsters in the street
will be as easy as visiting Mars on the way to school.
I think we're thinking a lot about augmented reality
now because increasingly we're moving into spaces
where the screen plane is a window into the world.
Whether it's here, or whether it's a window
in a shop that you're looking through
and you something else augmented on the side of a car.
All of those things are an opportunity
to basically think about this window into the world
where the screen disappears and it really is a portal,
and we're looking inside that world.
But we're putting it together.
Access to virtual worlds will become easier and easier
as the interface becomes more discreet.
It may even disappear completely.
(electronic chiming)
Good job!
Excellent!
Well done!
Level complete.
(sighs)
(speaking in a foreign language)
There is a risk of impoverishing
the world if we choose a virtual world
over the real world.
Because the disorder, the accidental, unexpected
element of life is something that gives life density.
And in this smooth world governed by algorithms,
ruled by machines, there's a big risk
you'll quickly get bored.
Creators of tomorrow's movies and video games
are forever improving the illusion of reality.
Producing worlds as credible as they are astonishing.
Research on the USC campus in Los Angeles
is taking visual effects to a whole new level.
Special effects wizard, Paul Debevec, and his team,
are behind the tool that is revolutionizing filmmaking,
Light Stage.
This visionary continues to push back
the frontiers of digital illusion.
I've always been very interested in the ability
of mixing the virtual world and the real world,
and making the virtual look so realistic
that you believe it.
My name is Paul Debevec.
My vision for the future is that computer graphics
technologies will produce virtual imagery
that's completely indistinguishable from the real world.
Light affects us subconsciously.
It's our subconscious that's understanding
the interaction between the light and matter.
And so, the art of cinematography is very much
about manipulating how things are illuminated
in order to give us a certain emotion,
or a certain feeling.
'Cause you can speak directly to people's emotional
subconscious context with the illumination.
So, if you have a digital character that
you wanna put in the scene and make it look
like they're really there you have to light it right.
We now have this technology that can capture
the light and realistically light a computer-generated
object to look like it was there in the real world.
All right, Kimmie, how are you feeling in there?
Hi, feeling good.
Excellent.
It looks like Jay's got you all set up
with the tracking markers on your head.
Welcome to Light Stage X.
This is where we digitize people's faces
to turn real people into digital people
that, hopefully, look just like them.
What we're gonna try to do is not just get
your neutral expression,
but since we have all of these cameras around
from left to right, and we even have a couple below,
we're gonna want you to make all of the different
facial expressions that we could possibly imagine
the digital version of you needing to do.
Light Stage can recreate all possible
lighting environments.
The sphere's seven cameras capture the light
reflected by the actress's face.
We'd like you to just blow up your cheeks a little bit.
All right, good, and then, eyes open,
look at the camera here.
And scanning in three, and two, and one.
The skin's texture is reproduced
in astonishing detail creating a 3D, ultra-realistic
model that can be modified at will.
At this point, we can produce a digital puppet
of an actor that looks exactly like, for example,
Sam Worthington from Avatar.
It can move it's face like Sam Worthington can,
but someone still needs to provide that performance.
The best way is to have Sam Worthington
get into a motion capture suit,
have the camera that looks at his face
record his facial motion,
and then, we map that motion onto the digital character.
He, basically, becomes his own puppeteer.
The process can age Brad Pitt
as Benjamin Button, or allow the same actor to play twins
in The Social Network.
Is there anyway to make this a fair fight?
Jump out and swim.
I think we'd have to jump out and drown.
Well, you could row forward,
and could row backward.
Is there any way to make this a fair fight?
Jump out and swim.
I think we'd have to jump out and drown.
Well, you could row forward,
and I could row backward.
We've gotten to the point with technology
where in terms of the appearance
you can't tell whose real and whose digital.
The next big frontier is can we do that with behavior,
and you can't tell who's real and who's digital.
There will be artificial intelligence that decides
what these characters are saying or can influence
what they're saying, and how they give the performance.
We'll have the technology so that anybody
can stay home and create an epic movie
because if they want a new actor for the scene,
it'll be in a drop down menu,
and then, there'll be little buttons you press
to decide if you want a man or a woman,
you want them dress this way or that way,
the hair color.
If you want them to be a little bit happier today,
or sadder.
You type in what you want them to say.
You work with them as a director.
We want to sample you.
We want to preserve you,
and we want to own this thing,
this thing called Robin Wright.
And what will you do with this thing
that you call Robin Wright?
We'll do all the things your Robin Wright wouldn't do.
I don't know exactly where piracy laws are
gonna go, and what's gonna happen with it,
but it is gonna be really interesting to see
how that unveils.
'Cause 20 years from now, somebody gets hold
of your digital version may be able to create
a movie of your digital self recreating lines
from something, or saying something that you
would never have said.
And I don't quite know how we're all in society
are gonna really address it at that stage.
This quest for ultra realism
isn't confined to movies.
There are pioneers a-plenty in the video game industry.
The new game, Hellblade, conjures a heroine
who all but human.
The more authentic she looks,
the more a player will identify with her.
Their gods can see into your mind.
They will use this power to destroy you.
They won't stop me.
I can still feel him.
Whatever's left of him.
They will never let him go.
I'm not gonna let him rot here!
You're the one rotting here.
Leave me alone.
You will die here.
No.
And all your suffering
will have been for nothing.
Shut up!
Achieving such realism requires tools
that will be widespread by 2050.
When you take a character
and you put them in a fantastical situation,
it's important that you believe that
that character is real.
Otherwise, the whole edifice of the fantasy falls over.
My name is Tameem Antoniades.
I'm 42 years old,
and I believe that real-time technology
is going to transform the way we experience
alternate realities.
That's cool.
So, it's like burst capillaries from the sun,
and wear, and weather.
Cracked lips from dehydration,
and under the nose as well.
That's awesome.
'Cause, obviously, we wanna get as far away
from healthy Western Melina as possible.
But it's good that we start with realism,
and then, we add these kind of details
to kind of bring her somewhere.
When we're looking at someone,
we're mostly looking at the eyes and the mouth.
And if those things look right,
if they move right,
and it feels right,
everything else fits,
and subconsciously you believe that character.
So, a lot of our effort was on her eyes.
But if the virtual character feels
wrong, inhuman, we recoil.
If it looks close to real,
but not exactly real,
it causes a revulsion response in a person.
And it looks strange, looks scary, looks unnatural.
And as humans, we're just so attuned to what
a human face looks like that if something
looks wrong with that face,
something looks not quite right.
It's not moving correctly.
You immediately have an instantaneous negative
reaction to it.
To make the character even more authentic,
the team uses another filmmaking innovation.
Performance capture.
This technique is a more cutting edge version
of the traditional motion capture.
It records the actresses performance in real time.
Her emotions, her voice, her movements.
Everything is recorded in exquisite detail.
The technology frees directors to create
nearly anything they can imagine.
We've got a scene where we want to capture Senua
talking to her alter ego in a mirror,
and so what we did for that, for example,
is we captured the performance
of Senua's alter ego in the mirror,
and then, we captured Senua's performance
facing the alter ego.
And now, we've got it in the game
we can immediately then go let's capture
the camera movement,
and we can frame them both.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Please, stop.
You'll never come back if you go there.
There's nothing to go back to.
Senua.
They were afraid.
I find real-time technology terribly exciting,
because what we used to do is we'd shoot actors
ina blank room with no sets, no costumes, nothing.
So, you shoot something, and then, you have to wait
sometimes over a year before you see what you've shot.
But now, we're doing it all live and in real time.
There is nothing to go back to.
We've lost so many.
I can't lose you.
I have blood on my hands.
Cut.
They bumped into each other, didn't they?
I don't know.
Let's see.
What is very interesting is that a lot
of the same technologies that are being employed
by cinema, are being employed by video games as well.
And the level of video games, and the quality level
of video games has improved massively.
In some cases, even getting close to what cinema's doing.
The video games have different needs.
They, basically, often have to create hundreds
of characters, and obviously, they have to play back
in a real-time environment.
Please, stop you'll never come back
if you go there.
There is nothing to go back to.
With new tools,
comes a new cinematic language.
A camera, bristling with sensors,
and localized in the empty studio can move
freely around the virtual characters.
With the camera, I can see the whole of the world.
The lighting, the post effects, the two Senuas,
their facial expressions.
I can hear them.
I've got everything I need to frame the shots
and get the best camera performance I can.
Oh, fuck I missed it.
All right, can we try that?
Can we reset and try that again?
It allows you to visualize what the scene
will look like on set to an almost finished quality.
Don't leave me.
(laughing)
Please.
It's not the technology itself that's important.
The technology lets you do new things,
but it's about people.
Storytellers, artists, who have a vision.
It's a way to share a vision.
And it's very important to realize
that it's a tool for people to communicate
their dreams to each other.
That's how I see it.
We all have dreams of greatness.
We have made this dream a reality.
The citadel.
What if tomorrow's entertainment
was driven by our dreams?
A new kind of storytelling is emerging.
One that gives viewers greater control.
These interactive experiences demand content
that mixes realities.
We don't necessarily have to restrict ourselves
to traditional storytelling structure.
We don't have to restrict ourselves
to reality, in any way,
and I don't mean like sci-fi.
I mean, really like how do you change the way
that you engage emotionally in the world.
Do you put almost invisible objects
inside the world space that are emotional triggers?
I think there's a huge opportunity here for
art and science to merge,
for all of the media skills to merge.
To start thinking about these large scale,
very high level collaborations,
and use our imagination to push beyond
what we think are those restrictions,
and start thinking about how can we actually
transcend ourselves.
To test these new perspectives
what world could be more suitable than Star Wars.
40 years after its creation,
the saga retains a unique hold on the popular imagination.
Oscar-winner John Gaeta, heads up a research lab
that prolongs the experience of cult movies.
Here, the richly-detailed world of Star Wars
acts as a launching pad for the mind-blowing
future of storytelling.
My name is John Gaeta.
I am the executive creative director of ILMX Lab.
We are trying to build a bridge to the future of Star Wars.
It's about a branching story
in a world that you can actually explore.
If you have a world that you can explore
than you can do a lot more than watch the story.
You could play there,
you could socialize there.
We'd like to think we understand
where the current generations seem to be heading
in terms of a device-filled world.
We're interested in using things like mobile devices
as portals into the universe.
We're interested in using goggles and glasses
of various sorts as windows in.
The actual overall experiment was to look at one
storyline in which characters are crisscrossing
over the story,
and they may enter and exit, right?
But once I go through the window,
I can go find out where the characters came,
and where they went,
and learn so much more.
The window opens and there's the scene,
it's playing out.
In a sense, it's like a sculpture playing out, right,
moving along.
But there is the world, just there right behind it, right?
So, we could walk past our scene into anywhere in the world.
I could walk into any of the rooms.
I could walk around the back of a building,
and what's there?
It's another scene, right?
So, I can discover more.
We are doing a lot of experimental prototyping
of forms of interaction and immersion,
and we are setting ourselves up for producing
and releasing actual entertainment itself, products,
but experiences that are given to the public
like a film or a game.
And it's a very interesting realm because
it has a whole set of new movie making challenges.
If you're trying to make a virtual reality movie.
One challenge is the person can look anywhere.
They could be anywhere.
They could be turned around and not watching
the action take place,
and how do you make sure that they're always
watching and looking in the place
that you need them to?
Or if you have a story that the person's interacting with,
how do you film something,
or how do you create a story with an engine
that is reacting to the person
that's changing storyline?
'Cause you can have an infinite number of storylines there.
And how do you direct a person through a storyline
still giving them a chance to make choices
and go their own directions,
but at the same time they could go anywhere.
In the end, the story has to have a point
that you've created to it.
This new form of entertainment
aims to capture our hearts and minds.
For some, it's a dream come true.
Imagine interacting with your favorite droids.
Soon, that'll be possible without even leaving your couch.
Immersive attractions will create memorable experiences.
I think that idea of interaction and engagement
add an emotional, tactile, haptic,
you know, how do you engage more of the senses
in VR than in any other medium,
is available to us.
And so, it seems like the right direction to go.
The more we use these tools,
the more we'll blur the boundaries between
real and virtual.
In forms yet to be imagined,
they will occupy an ever-growing place in our lives.
This hyper-stimulation could spark our creativity.
We won't just be experiencing someone else's vision,
but we will be creating our own vision.
That's sort of what the YouTube generation brought us,
is that people create their own content.
In 2050, man's most powerful tool
will remain his imagination.
Entertainment allows the mind to dream,
and sometimes that means simply doing nothing.
(dramatic music)