A Pixar-Inspired Projector That Beams VR Into an Entire Room

Story and images by Joseph Flaherty / Wired

Virtual reality can make you feel like you're high atop the Wall in Westeros, flying like a bird, or running from an alien intent on killing you, but to everyone else, you look like a spaz flailing about in high-tech ski googles. This makes demonstrating a head-mounted display like the Oculus Rift difficult in a group setting. You can set up a monitor that displays what you're seeing, but the result is an underwhelming pair of screenshots. Hardly the immersive experience VR promises.

That's the insight behind a slick projector called Immersis that demonstrates the panoramic power of VR en masse.

Immersis' projector was designed to look like a cross between the Pixar lamp's evil twin and a tripod from the War of the Worlds. Its single fish-eye lens beams a 180 degree VR experience into an interior space. Instead of a pair of small, stereoscopic images, your entire field of view is filled with immersive scenes from a virtual world. It can't provide the simulation of three dimensions that someone wearing the googles enjoys, others in the room experience a scene that spills off the screen and onto walls, doors, the dog, and anything else in the room.

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