A studio that adapted Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: The Seven Ravens into an augmented reality experience for the Magic Leap 2 believes that combining a physical book with AR content could make a cool Vision Pro experience.
Rather than the purely virtual book brought to life in Magic Leap, the studio sees the potential for using Vision Pro’s high-resolution passthrough feature to create something truly special …
CNET’s Jim Henson tried the Magic Leap version.
The experience felt like I was looking down into the book at a world inside, where I could tilt and turn to see more beyond the book’s portal. Sometimes, characters also come up and peer back through the window at me, too. Tilting the book to the side can cause water to spill out from an ocean scene. New AR scenes start every time one of the book’s thick boardlike pages is turned.
Also, when I reached what I thought was the end of the book, I was instructed to flip it around and start turning pages in the other direction. The story continued as I flipped pages back again. A book like this could potentially be infinite.
You can check out the video trailer below.
The experience was created by Felix & Paul Studios, best known for their multipart 360-degree VR documentary Space Explorers.
The largest production ever filmed in space, Space Explorers: The ISS Experience is an epic four-part immersive series that invites you to join eight astronauts on life-changing missions aboard the International Space Station. Shot over two years with exclusive access to the crew, The ISS Experience offers an intimate take on the joy, wonder, and dangers of life in orbit.
Studio cofounder Paul Raphael says that the quality of Vision Pro’s passthrough feature makes it an ideal candidate for a mixed-reality experience.
“I think passthrough would be great for this […] You’re aware of the environment, what’s in your hands, but the focus is on what’s in the book,” Raphael said. “Even if what’s being rendered is not quite photorealistic, you’re getting quite close with the Vision Pro. And even the Quest 3 is going to do a pretty great job, presumably. I totally see those as the prime sort of devices for this experience.”
Of course, you don’t need a headset to create these kinds of mixed-reality books. NASA has an AR Notebook you can explore using your iPhone.
From the beautifully embossed classic NASA “worm” insignia on the hardcover exterior to the immersive AR experience, the NASA AR Notebook is perfect for any space fan or astronomy lover.
Activate the AR experience by pointing your device’s camera at the front cover of the notebook, and watch as our solar system springs to life before your eyes.
9to5Mac’s Take
It’s a fun idea, for sure, and a headset would clearly create a more immersive experience than using an iPhone or iPad to view the AR content.
But just as NASA’s AR Notebook doesn’t really need the notebook, I’m also not really sure what a physical book would bring to the party here.
You could create the book virtually, and have exactly the same experience bar the physical sensation of turning the pages. Given that a large physical book would be both heavy and unwieldy, it strikes me that it would really just be a gimmick.
But what’s your view? Could combining a physical book with AR be a cool Vision Pro experience? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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