Virtual Reality is booming and I love every second of it! Being able to experience some of the worlds that have been created has brought me great insight to the story telling techniques that have been developed thus far. What I really enjoyed in terms of what did work was the documentary involving the Ebola outbreak in Africa. The VR has been referred to as the empathy machine, and this stood true with the Ebola story. What really worked to help create this space was the 360-degree view at all times to the story that allowed you to really experience the space. It allows you to watch and listen to the main story while being able to view sub stories around as well. Being able to see these kids who would look up at me in pure amazement really made me feel as though I was in their world. I loved this and it made me feel connected to them and to their story.

One thing that I felt didn't work was the sudden changes that sometimes occur from scene to scene. When you use sudden cuts it can really take away from the experience and also feel a little discombobulating.

There were some other weird feelings that people experienced when using the VR. We felt strange when we were not sure what to do. If you are not sure how you are suppose to move around or what to press to get stuff accomplished it made the entire scene feel not as real. One of the students in our class when using the Oculus also did not like being able to control the speed in which she was moving. She was a dragon and felt like she was moving to slow which took her out of the world.

While this took away from feeling physically presence of the experience, there were experiences that felt very real! When I went into the world of Star Wars I was blown away. I was flying around in the x-wing fighting against the empire! What truly made it feel real was looking around in the plane. Not only could I look forward to see enemies but if I look up and around in the plane I could see enemies flying above me and to the right and left while still flying straight. It made me feel like I was really in a plane.

In the past, this sort of experience would make people feel some nausea but I personally did not experience this, and the people I observed in my class did not have this experience either. I did notice that when scenes suddenly changed with jump cuts it was not very appealing to the people in the world.

The main attributes that make the experience real is the smoothness and head tracking which allows you to truly feel the experiences and the full spherical range of vision. These are so important because it is something that gives an allusion of being in a new world with the freedom to look and do what you want.

I am looking forward to experiencing more worlds in the Virtual Reality world. The experience that I would love to try would be Dragon Ball Z - Kami-Sama Temple 2.0 [DK2]. This would bring my childhood to life!