If there’s one thing that the entire VR industry can agree on, it’s that the tech’s vocabulary needs to grow. We categorize VR content as games and videos right now, and it doesn’t do it justice. Samsung is trying to change that.
Speaking at its Innovation Keynote at the Samsung Developer Conference today, Executive Vice President John Pleasants detailed the eight major categories that the company assigns to VR experiences, from the obvious to the minute, while also teasing where else it wants to see the tech go.
Ultimately, Samsung’s definitions seem to resemble a mix of media, services, and genres. Gaming, for example, gets an entire category to itself with Gunjack used as an example, though a subject as specific as Real Estate, allowing people to build and explore virtual buildings before stepping into real ones, is also recognized. Pleasants also spoke of how News could be radically changed, with viewers no longer separated from the stories but feeling as if they were a part of them. Footage of recordings from developing countries was used to communicate this.
Social VR is another obvious label, and something that’s steadily growing in importance within the industry. Facebook owns Gear VR co-creator Oculus, after all, and the platform continues to benefit from that. Then there are common ideas like attending a concert in 360 degrees, which Samsung files under Entertainment, with the example of a recent 360 video recording of U2. More exotic recordings, like underwater footage of swimming with dolphins, might come under Experiential. The company also places Art, Creativity, and 3D Modelling as one group and, interestingly enough, gives Animation such as Baobab Studio’s Invasion! its own branding.
Those are just eight of the areas the company is thinking about. As seen above, Pleasants also teased another 16 categories you could consider. Again, many of them simply refer to the genre of content you might view in VR, though there are some other interesting labels such as Instructional and Streaming Media.
Still, Samsung’s list largely refers to the type of experiences you’ll see on its Milk VR video streaming platform, and don’t feel like they do justice to VR as a whole. VR’s dictionary still needs writing, but there are a few helpful hints here.
