Simon Columb tries out the Oculus Rift Interstellar Experience…
In preparation for the release of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar is a unique piece of publicity. In fact, it recalls the floating out-of-world experience we all felt when experiencing last year’s 3D Gravity. A mere four-minute is your limit, and within the time you are a floating space man or woman akin to Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway in the sci-fi adventure due for release on November 7th.
Oculus Rift was developed in America and was partly funded by Kickstarter backers. An immersive, 3D and 360-degree experience, small pens and notepads hover past your face while you float. However you choose to look, the technology reproduces the space-station in an experience that is thoroughly impressive. Physically, you are merely sat in a comfortable chair wearing top-of-the-range headphones as you are prepared for, and then experience, zero-gravity. Who’d have thought that in the IMAX cinema at Waterloo, you could go to space!
Unfortunately, as you look below, your legs have vanished and your own hands are not tracked if you reach out to touch the dials on the dashboard. But, within four minutes, this is merely a tease of the technology of the future. In fact, the peaceful atmosphere you float through puts you on edge. Knowing nothing about the plot of Interstellar, I was tense. Was something going to smash through a window? Would I find myself lost, Sandra Bullock-style, amongst the cosmos? I was so invested in the experience it says how far it has already come. Imagine an entire film created within the Oculus Rift format? Imagine a computer game? Because it seems awfully close…
Of course, here in the UK we have experienced Oculus Rift over the weekend – either at the MCM Comic Con or at Waterloo on Friday here in London (comment below!) – but it is touring the states still. In addition to New York, Los Angeles and Houston, from the 5th November through to the 19th, it will appear in Chantilly, Virginia at the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Center with further opportunities at AMC cinemas across North America. Do check it out if you can!
Simon Columb
Originally published October 27, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
