Virtual Reality History – XR Bavaria Meetup

I had the great pleasure to organize an event on virtual reality history together with the XRBavaria that I’m also a board member of. The focus was not particularly spatial audio, but still I had a blast to moderate through the event and learned a lot. This is the follow-up report in case you missed it.

Here is the trailer to get you more excited to keep on reading:

Let’s start with the first speaker:

Maria Courtial, Faber Courtial

Maria ist Geschäftsführerin, Produzentin und manchmal auch Co-Direktorin von Faber Courtial mit Sitz in Darmstadt. Faber Courtial ist ein Unternehmen, das seit mehr als 20 Jahren virtuelle Welten produziert. Angefangen haben sie mit Animation und Spezialeffekten. Seit acht Jahren liegt der Schwerpunkt nun auch auf VR-Filmen und interaktiven Erlebnissen.

Sie wählen sowohl vergangene als auch aufregende Welter aus und machen sie mit der virtuellen Realität sehr realistisch erlebbar. Man könnte sagen, dass das ultimative Ziel darin besteht, die Nutzer emotional zu berühren. Daher sind die Inhalte ihrer Produkte Kultur, Wissenschaft, Geschichte und Unterhaltung.

Zu den Kunden von Faber Courtial gehören öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunkanstalten, Veranstalter von Sonderausstellungen und Museen. Darüber hinaus bringen sie vielversprechende Projekte auf eigene Faust auf den Weg, welche extra finanziert werden. Es ist schwer einmal anzufangen, aber Maria ermutigt dazu, einfach mit einer innovativen Idee und einem Prototyp loszulegen. Auf dem Gebiet der Virtual Reality Geschichte gibt es noch viel zu entdecken!

Einige ihrer Projekte sind in Jahren entstanden, die meisten jedoch in wenigen Monaten. Fast alle ihre Produktionen wurden im Computer mit VR und XR erstellt. Ihre Bilder und Aufnahmen stammen aus Dokumentarfilmen und Museumsausstellungen. Außerdem nutzen sie ihr eigenes Studio, um Aufnahmen zu machen, die die hohe Qualität ihrer Filme sicherstellen.

To get to know more: https://faber-courtial.de

Lisa Schulz CPO, Timeride

Lisa is the co-founder and chief product officer of TimeRide. Timeride’s vision is to come as close as possible to time traveling. They are using VR as their key technology to deliver the most immersive customer experience. Guests will be sent back in time using modern technology, experiencing history in virtual reality like never before.

Timeride started with their core product called Senseum, which is now supplemented by “Timeride Go”. Their mission is to let people feel the history with their own senses!

• “Senseum” is an indoor attraction ( f.e. in Frankfurt) with rooms and VR headsets. Their biggest task in doing this attraction is to reconstruct the whole city as correctly as possible. This can include hundreds and hundreds of buildings, landmarks, and tourist attractions
• “Timeride Go” is a guided city tour with a mobile VR headset. You are at a place in the city and as soon as you put on the glasses, you can see what the place looked like in the past. So you are able to look into the history and can compare today and the past.

What will the future of virtual reality history feel like at Timeride?

• more creativity and interaction are planned
• more mobile applications from roller coasters to e-bus city tours
• better hardware for VR and AR will be upgraded
• In the end: Convergence of VR, AR, self-guided and audio guide

Give it a try and have a look at their homepage! https://timeride.de

Matthias Leitner, Munich 72

Matthias Leitner is a digital storyteller, UX designer, and digital strategist. He is working for different museums on his own tickets as well as the Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). He presents a new project “Munich 72” innovated by Eva Deinert and him.

The Olympic games in Munich in 1972 can be relived in a VR experience. A walk-through documentary in Social VR that traces what happened 50 years ago at the 1972 Olympic Games. Eventually, the games were supposed to be cheerful. But on the 11th day, Palestinian terrorists take members of the Israeli team hostage.

So it’s a Social-VR experience that could be considered a “metaverse” approach. To get in touch with the virtual reality history environment an app called “VR Chat” is used. It works with a Windows PC and SteamVR. Additionally, it can be experienced with standard VR glasses instead of the desktop application. There you will be able to choose an avatar to walk through different scenes.

For the content, the team used original recordings from radio and television, and photos of the Israeli Olympic team and combined them with 3D objects from that time and placed them in a freely interpreted world.

If you want to try it, here is a detailed manual: https://www.br.de/extra/muenchen-72/index.html