Late last year, NBC’s popular late night talk show the Tonight Show with host Jimmy Fallon debuted a new Virtual Reality Pictionary segment which uses the HTC Vive and Tilt Brush. Scarlett Johansson, Michael Che, and Dove Cameron are the latest to step into VR with Fallon.
Fallon is no stranger to VR. As far back as 2013, when he was hosting Late Night, he saw an early protoype version of the Oculus Rift that was held together with gaffers tape. In 2014, Fallon demoed Sony’s PSVR (back when it was still called ‘Project Morpheus’) on The Tonight Show. He’s also had the HTC Vive on the show in a number of one-off segments.
Embracing the HTC Vive, The Tonight Show last year debuted a new segment called Virtual Reality Pictionary, employing the headset and Google’s Tilt Brush VR paint app to play—you guessed it—pictionary.
In pictionary, pairs of players take turns drawing and guessing. The drawer is shown a word that the guesser doesn’t know, and the drawer must draw a picture in a way that the guesser can guess the word correctly from the picture alone. One point for a correct guess within the time limit.
This is the second time the Virtual Reality Pictionary segment has aired, confining out guess that the set was built for recurring use. Given the well thought out VR space featuring a large playspace, screen for audience viewing, and couches nearby for guests, we’re thinking it’s now only a matter of time before we see different VR apps and segments appearing on the Tonight Show.
Tilt Brush actually got its own experimental pictionary game (which the creators call ‘Tiltasaurus’) last year as well. It lets the VR-user see a word inside the headset that the non-VR users can’t see (you can even add your own words to the inbuilt dictionary). While the VR user draws, those outside the headset can look at the computer monitor to guess the word.
