David Attenborough's VR project 'Hold the World' is absolutely astonishing
You don't get many people who've been at the forefront of innovation in media like Sir David Attenborough.
Having brought Britain colour television, as well as his wealth of natural history programmes like Blue Planet and Planet Earth, David Attenborough will be stepping into VR at the start of June with Sky in his VR project Hold the World.
Hold the World has been made by Sky and Factory 42. In it, you are transported to the Natural History Museum in London, where a hologram of Sir David talks you through various artifacts and specimens which you are able to pick up, turn around, expand and shrink at will. The team at Factory 42 had to select just a few objects from the museum's collection of over 80 million.
Rarely in a museum do you get the chance to have a massive pterodactyl swoop over your head
I went to try out the VR experience at Sky headquarters, and it was genuinely wonderful. As a natural history nerd who spent probably thousands of hours darting around the Natural History Museum as a child, this VR experience offers the chance to do something most kids in museums can only dream of -- messing around with the exhibits.
This is exactly why Sir David was so excited to get involved in Hold the World. "The one thing that really frustrates you in a museum is when you see something really fascinating, you don't want to be separated from it by glass," he told a Q&A panel on May 23rd. "You want to be able to look at it and see the back of it and turn it around and so on."
In the VR you can play with artefacts which in real life are so delicate even world-class scientists aren't allowed to handle them. Even better once you're done playing with the static objects they come to life. Rarely in a museum do you get the chance to have a massive pterodactyl swoop over your head.
"The opportunity to bring specimens to life like this has been incredible," said a spokesperson for the museum. "Animating the skeletons and fossils within the experience was particularly exciting for our scientists. Combining 3D scans with behavioural data that experts have gathered over years of study has resulted in both beautiful and scientifically accurate animations. It was a fascinating challenge to work alongside animators to produce an immersive experience that is as accurate as it can possibly be.”
Meanwhile the holographic Sir David walks you through the most interesting parts of the artefacts, telling you facts like the mystery of the whale's defunct hip-bones (it's thought they might be there to anchor the animal's genitalia) making the whole thing a uniquely personal experience.
To be rendered as a hologram, Attenborough had to be flown to Microsoft studios in Seattle, to be filmed by a total of 106 cameras. "It's quite creepy really," Attenborough said about the experience, "you go into a room where everything is green."
The amount of Brits out there who would willingly sacrifice a finger or two to have a private guided tour of the Natural History Museum with David Attenborough is probably in the thousands (yes that's hyperbole, but come on, it's David freakin' Attenborough) and this VR experience offers precisely that.
The VR experience will be available at the beginning of June in the Sky VR app on Google Daydream View, Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift.
Topics Virtual Reality Celebrities
