Adam Savage’s Tested VR (2019) takes you to the heart of the maker scene, giving you a behind-the-scenes look at the workshops of industry pros. Now the app’s second season is live, which brings eight new episodes to the table where you’ll get to explore workshops from studios such as Animax Designs and Weta Workshop.
The app, which presents video captured in 5K VR180, is available for free through its dedicated app on Quest and Go, and through Oculus TV. Episodes tend to run around 20 – 30 minutes, and cover a wide set of topics such as movie props, robots, and everything else you’d expect to possibly see in the ‘One-day Builds’ from Adam Savage.
Savage says in an Oculus blogpost that the most challenging episode was ‘In Fantasy Miniatures’, which shrinks viewers down to the size of miniature figurines.
“This is one of the trickiest things we did this entire season,” Savage says. “It’s easy to understand that our 3D camera is actually two cameras that are spaced to mimic the space between human eyes, creating a proper stereo image. What’s harder to understand is exactly how to modify those parameters when you want to change the scale of the 3D in relation to the observer. For the miniature sets we had to adjust our camera as if it were a tiny human being. This meant that we had to push the camera lenses incredibly close together in order to achieve a parallax that made the scale work. But it did. And it’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever witnessed: a miniature set that feels like I’m in it.”
There seems to be an awesome range of content this season too, including everything from forging a Viking axe to Adam Savage himself trouncing around in a velociraptor suit.
Check out the full list of episodes below:
- Lifecasting Adam Savage — Weta Workshop
- Fantasy Miniatures — Johnny Fraser-Allen
- Forged Viking Axe — James Austin
- Icewave — Marc DeVidts
- Animatronic Robots — Mark Setrakian
- Velociraptor Costume — Adam Savage
- Dinosaur Skin — Animax Designs
- Character Puppets — Animax Designs
- Inside Adam Savage’s Cave (Bonus Content)