What is a VR Theatre?

What is a VR Theatre?

A Virtual Reality Theatre is a room that houses a dedicated and often custom engineered immersive display system. This system typically occupies large physical dimensions to encompass a small to medium sized audience. Normally, theatres of this nature are designed to draw the audience visually and sometimes audibly into the virtual experiences that are displayed before them. These displays are usually computer-generated in real-time and often fully interactive.

Improved data visualisation

The advantage of the large scale afforded by the theatres display surface is that multiple windows and pictures can be viewed simultaneously. Content can be easily compared and contrasted so that presentations can deliver more information at any time. To further the collaborative aspect of this use case, such displays can often be connected wirelessly to portable devices over wi-fi. This makes sharing and contributing to the meeting in progress very easy and more importantly very productive. VR Theatres become a focal point for multiple departments within an organisation who can take advantage of the display facility on a day to day basis.

High level visual immersion

The primary use of such a VR Theatre is to display multi-media and VR content to immerse an audience, this can be delivered in monoscopic or with stereoscopic 3D depth to enhance the sense of presence. This high level of visual immersion can also be complemented with interaction from wireless devices, gesture, touch and the many different technologies at our disposal.

Increased ROI

Today customers can achieve a higher return on investment with such theatres when they are able to switch between a dual use configuration. Given the large pixel real estate afforded by such displays, the entire theatre screen can often be used to support standard Windows compatible applications and presentational modes of use becoming a huge desktop that is familiar to any operator.

VR Multi-view

One of the old challenges to VR theatres was how to collaborate within the virtual content. Older VR theatres used spatial tracking systems to allow a single user to have their perspective on that virtual content dynamically tuned. This would deliver a natural viewpoint to that person whilst colleagues would be left with a skewed or compromised vision. However, today, with a high frame rate capable projection we can solve this problem and multiple participants can be afforded a dynamic corrected view. This allows simultaneous interaction with the displayed content from different point of views. Furthermore, with these emerging technologies, we are able to deliver totally different content upon the display at the same time so you could ultimately choose what individual audience members see and what experiences are open to them.

Collaboration made easy

Modern VR Theatres can now be linked to other VR enabled displays around the globe so that content can be reviewed between remote parties, who will see each other as virtual avatars. This makes the decision processes faster and meetings more productive whilst lowering the organisation's carbon footprint relating to unnecessary travel.

What future lies ahead for VR Theatres?

The future of VR Theatres is evolving all the time in terms of their capabilities and what they can offer, and exciting trends are emerging. The use of solid-state projection with unique short throw lens optics reduces the footprint and complexity of the latest generation displays. New advanced polymer based rear projection fabrics offer the ability to accommodate such theatres with huge display surfaces inside buildings and rooms. This would have previously been inaccessible given the conventional screen substrates of the past. Direct LED 3D capable tile-based technologies also introduce new configurations for such displays with the ability to deliver vibrant images without a concern to the lighting conditions of a room and within a footprint that projection approaches could never hope to afford. Keeping ahead of these innovations allows Antycip to deliver solutions that can meet your needs for today and tomorrow. Have a look at our visual displays to find out more about the solutions we offer. Want to stay up to date with what we're doing? Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.