There’s Honey, I Shrunk The Kids but have you seen its obscure sequel, “Honey, I Used State Of The Art VR Technology To Turn Our Child’s Dollhouse Into a Virtual Dream Home”?
Okay, that movie doesn’t really exist, thank god, but HTC Vive owner Toby Newman did recently use his headset to do just that. Thinking outside the toy box, Newman took 360 degree images of his daughter’s dollhouse with the dolls inside set up in different poses. He then got the images running on his Vive and let his daughter take a look. You can see her exploring the house as if she were really standing inside it below.
She seems pretty convinced by it. For those wondering, Newman also posted the images he used.
For anyone thinking about doing the same thing, this same concept could pretty easily be achieved on mobile-based headsets like Google Cardboard and Gear VR too. You don’t even need the 360 camera Newman has used here; Google has a Cardboard Camera Android app that allows you to take 360 degree images with standard smartphone cameras, though the best results do come from native solutions.
It’s a pretty charming and inventive use of 360 degree images that we hadn’t considered before, and it gets us thinking about how the concept could be taken a few steps further. Imagine using true VR to bring toys your kids own to life, or letting them explore interactive, realistic versions of the worlds they dream up when playing.
It could be VR’s answer to the popular toys-to-life genre of games like Skylanders or Lego Dimensions. There’s undoubtedly a big market for VR there once it comes down in price a little.
That’s a little harder and takes considerably more effort than simply taking 360 degree pictures, of course, but this offers a glimpse of the way kids could be spending play time in the future. Imagine a real life Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. The horror.
