Starbreeze Studios, the company behind the StarVR HMD, announced that it has created its own VR cinematic experience to showcase the potential of the company’s forthcoming VR HMD.
The StarVR HMD is still in development (and it will eventually get eye-tracking), but the company has been going around the world showing the prototypes to the press and the public for nearly a year now. Starbreeze came out of nowhere with the announcement of the StarVR HMD at E3 last year. The company brought multiple headsets to the event and was letting people line up to try The Walking Dead VR experience. We had the chance to try out the prototype HMD (and speak with Guillaume Gouraud from Starbreeze) in September at Immersed 2015, and we came away impressed even though the hardware being rough around the edges.
The StarVR HMD features an ultra-wide 210-degree field of view. Starbreeze said this is achieved by placing two quad-HD displays inside the HMD. The screens are placed at an angle that lets them wrap around your face, allowing for much greater peripheral vision in VR.
The Walking Dead VR experience that the company has been showing people provides a sample of what a game StarVR could be, but Starbreeze sees far more potential than just games for its hardware. Starbreeze announced that its next demo, Cockatoo Spitz, is a cinematic experience that the company produced in-house.
“We felt the need to creatively push the movie industry into the VR space to fully realize the potential in the new medium, and at the same time showcase the strength of StarVR’s 210 field of view,” said Michael Hjorth, Starbreeze Chairman and Cockatoo Spitz executive producer.
We don't know much about the experience yet; Starbreeze simply revealed Cockatoo Spitz's existence and said that the feature has been directed by Stephane Barbato.
Starbreeze will debut Cockatoo Spitz on the StarVR HMD on Wednesday, May 11 at the Cannes film festival in France. The company will also have The Walking Dead VR experience at the event.
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