The BBC Virtual Newsroom

The BBC Future Media division has just released a great example of a Mirror World in VR. The BBC Virtual Newsroom transports Oculus Rift owners into the news department of the BBC.

This is a passive experience, meaning you can’t navigate around the various parts of the studio or broadcasting units, but instead you have a 360 degree view around the camera position. It’s a nice demonstration of how VR can be used to take people to places they wouldn’t or couldn’t normally visit. The demo can be downloaded here.

This isn’t the first time a TV station has allowed people to virtually explore a studio. Sky News re-created their news studio in Second Life back in 2007, although this is the first use of virtual reality in this context. The image below shows the virtual studio in Second Life.

Although this isn’t really a virtual world experience, we would still classify this as a demo of a Mirror World – using virtual reality to allow the exploration of a real world place. The Mirror World genre is yet to gather momentum in virtual reality but expect this to change quite quickly in the near future. Here’s the Mirror World category in the KZero VR Radar.

 

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