‘Ready Player One’ Film Gets First Teaser Trailer

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Jul 23, 2017

Ready Player One, the upcoming film directed by Steven Spielberg based on the VR-centric novel by Ernest Cline, just saw its first teaser trailer, released at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.

As written by Cline, Ready Player One follows Wade Watts on his journey through the OASIS, a pervasive virtual reality program that nearly everyone on the planet visits using their VR headsets. As a high schooler living in ‘the stacks’—trailers grafted together into large and dangerous towers—Wade’s only respite is a rusted out old van hidden away in a junkyard where he accesses the OASIS. After the death of eccentric OASIS’ architect James Halliday, a billionaire genius who in Willy Wonka-fashion offers up the rights to the OASIS and all of his money for anyone who can win the grand Easter egg hunt he’s left behind, Wade sets out to solve the cryptic game left behind by Halliday. The catch: before his death, Halliday was obsessed with ’80s pop culture, so Wade must immerse himself in everything from books, music, TV, and film from the era to truly understand the mind of the man who built the most important VR program in the world.

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Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Cline and Zak Penn, the Ready Player One film is charging up an all-star cast, including Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, and T. J. Miller.

According to a report by The Hollywood Reporter, Spielberg said the film is “the most amazing flash-forward and flashback at the same time about a decade I was very involved in, the ’80s, and a flash-forward to a future that is awaiting all of us, whether we like it or not.”

Ready Player One is slated to hit theaters on March 30, 2018.

D3Pixel

Loved the book. Looking forwards to this.
Ombra Alberto

Gloves are out of fashion aside from being ridiculous.
Bulky and Unrealistic.
- Wednaud Ronelus
  
  So what’s your suggestion????
  - Ombra Alberto
    
    In a futuristic film, do not use gloves that look like a welder.
    - Redwalljp
      
      Don’t make judgements on just the few seconds you see.
      
      This is Steven Spielberg. None of us are in a position to give him film-making advice.
      
      In the story, Wayde uses a cheap VR set at the start. Those gloves could be intentionally bulky to provide a comparison with better stuff down the line.
    - Frédéric Lopez
      
      Big gloves could provide haptic/touch feedback on every part of the hand. Motion controllers as we know them today can’t provide this.
- Duane Locsin
  
  the character is meant to be poor and he could possibly just have very old, cheap VR gear that is equivalent to ‘Google cardboard’ for the time.
  
  I mean he is doing this in a makeshift van and is using very conventional fans.
  
  The rest of the trailer shows others with clearly more advanced, expensive and refined tech.
iUserProfile

Headset isn’t stereoscopic – fail.
- Redwalljp
  
  You’re complaining that there is only one “screen” instead of two in the visor?
  
  Look left and right. You’ll be able to see the outline of your nose in each eye. Any sort of “screen” divider would be visible and hence immersion breaking.
  
  The story talks about visors using better technology than the early clunky visors that kicked off the VR revolution. Visors do not have to be visibly stereoscopic.
  - iUserProfile
    
    First: Wasn’t meant dead serious.
    Second: No – I think it’s not stereoscopic because there’s no double image. If you don’t display a second render at an offset for the eye to see you’re brain will not construct a 3 dimensional picture of what your eyes preceive.
    I don’t know every technology but you can explain to me how this whould work without a double image or how a visor can do it without being visible stereoscopic – sounds awesome.
    - Redwalljp
      
      1. Fair enough.
      2. You’re right in that you need two images.
      Instead of projecting an image onto a screen which each eye then sees, you can project the image directly onto the retina of each eye. I’m guessing that what you are seeing inside the visor is a single “field of projectors” that can direct different colored light into each eye as necessary. That would allow a stereoscopic image to be seen in each eye. At least, that is my guess at the theory behind this tech.
      
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_retinal_display
      - Frédéric Lopez
        
        A virtual retinal display wouldn’t work in this case, they’re only supposed to work for an eye at a specific (short) distance, not with a camera with a varying distance.
      - Redwalljp
        
        What camera are you talking about?
        
        I’m talking about a possible explanation for there being only a single apparent “screen” (or projector field) on the inside of the visor shown in the Ready Player One teaser trailer.
        
        When worn, the inside of the visor would sit a couple of centimeters in front of the eyes and probably 6-8 cm in front of the retina (I’m no biologist and haven’t measured the diameter of the human eye). Wouldn’t that be a sufficiently short distance for the technology to work?
      - Frédéric Lopez
        
        I mean the camera used to film the inside of the headset wouldn’t show anything with a virtual retinal display because they’re supposed to work only at a very short distance from the eye. But yes it would work for the eye if it’s at the correct distance, it’s already been done in the labs.
      - Redwalljp
        
        Ok, I think we’re talking about different things. The camera used to film the inside of the headset is most likely just an ordinary film camera and as such not part of the story.
        
        As the story is set in VR, there would be no camera used to record any images in the story. The world and everything else in it is supposed to be computer generated. I’m guessing that, in the story, the perspectives of each avatar is then projected from the inside of each visor onto the retinas of the respective user (in the story). That is probably why in the teaser trailer, the inside of the visor is portrayed as one “screen” and not two stereoscopic “screens” as is currently used by current VR headsets.
    - Frédéric Lopez
      
      It would work if it was a light field display, a lenticular screen or a screen with a parallax barrier. From the single point of view of the camera a single image would be visible, but two different images would be seen by two cameras or two eyes.
- Lucidfeuer
  
  sub-180° FOV – fail.
- yag
  
  and what about the prehistoric ski-goggle design… I know the MC is broke but come on, it’s 2044.
Foreign Devil

This and the new blade runner coming out in the same year? Maybe I’ll finally go back to the movie theaters!
Jon

Maybe I’ll go to the cinema twice this year. Loved the book.
*(My other cinema visit is of course saved for Star Wars).
Doctor Bambi

It may be a stretch, but I’m pretty sure the soundtrack is either a super epic rendition of Pure Imagination from the original Willy Wonka movie or it’s heavily inspired by it.
- Tom
  
  No stretch that is 100% what they’re going for. Think about the relationship to the words and the movie concept. Brilliantly done music for the teaser.
Lucidfeuer

The fact that it is yet another “80s” inspired movie show how deep the overall culture problem is…
Kris Bunch

While you all are arguing over gloves and the headset I am more worried about the movie sticking close to the book. It showed lots of cool things in VR but nothing really about his quest and the keys.