Oculus Story Studio, the VR headset company’s in-house production team, has released an immersive trailer of their animated VR short featuring a lovable little hedgehog, Henry.
Henry is Story Studio’s second film, but really shows the company’s Pixar DNA which they acquired from several of their recent hires like ex-Pixar artist Saschka Unseld, now the studio’s creative director, and Maxwell Planck, a one-time Pixar software engineer turned technical lead at Oculus.
See Also: Hands-on: Oculus’ ‘Henry’ is a Glimpse at Cinema’s Interactive and Immersive Future
In the Henry ‘VR trailer’ Elijah Wood provides the voice-over, which takes you through the basic premise of the rendered short film.
Strapping into the Oculus Rift DK2, one thing was immediately apparent: as soon as Henry notices you, his eyes are locked on you no matter where you move—almost oozing with sorrow at the cruel fate that left him both cute but ultimately unhuggable. I felt empathy for the little guy, which isn’t as weird as it sounds. This is what VR brings to the storytelling table – instant, natural empathy for a character with which you’re sharing virtual and personal space.
It was like stepping into a cartoon with a singular focus on an extremely relatable character. I don’t feel like I had enough time to bond with Henry, but I did see glimpses of personality, almost in a way you might judge an AI chatbot to be approaching something that resembles humanity.
Of course I’d still have a hard time explaining it to my 90-something-year old grandfather, but that’s par for the course considering the speed at which VR is moving nowadays.
Henry will be available for free at the Rift’s launch in Q1 2016, but you can download the trailer on Oculus share for viewing on the DK2.