Ten of us flew in together from New York to Vancouver last night, and several more of our team met us here today. The big crunch for SIGGRAPH 2018 is upon us.
I haven’t done a truly large show at SIGGRAPH for many years. This one has a million moving parts, a large crew, and a budget that is probably best not to dwell upon.
You don’t do these types of things unless you are trying to change the nature of the conversation. And we are definitely trying to change the nature of the conversation.
When people these days think of “Virtual Reality”, they very likely think of something like Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, or the recent Spielberg film adapted from that book. In that view of VR, when people enter a virtual world they completely disconnect from their physical bodies.
The production we will be showing argues for something different. We want people to be aware of each others’ real presence, to share actual physical space, even as they enter a virtual world together. We don’t aim to replace physical gathering, but to evolve it.
The only way to explain to people why that is good is to show them. And for that you need to build something, and then invite thousands of people to experience it.
Which is what we will be doing this week at SIGGRAPH. After that, I think we will probably all catch up on sleep.