A mainstay of US TV for years, The Late Show has joined the ranks of mainstream media outlets to feature VR on their show, and then tak the piss out of it. Exploring the recent news that CNN will be broadcasting the live democratic presidential candidate debate in VR, powered by NextVR technology, Colbert dons a Gear VR headset to see what all the fuss is about.
Virtual reality is coming, and one sure way to tell is the amount of airspace the technology receives in the mainstream media, and better still, how much time satirists and comedians spend making fun of it.
Political satirist Stephen Colbert, whose show The Colbert Report was a critical and popular success for Comedy Central before taking the reigns on the Late Show on CBS, took the opportunity of poking fun at this latest intersection of cutting-edge technology and dusty politics. Donning a Samsung Gear VR headset, he points out over a series of jokes how pointless seems to him.
CNN have announced that they’re to “make history” on October hosting the first-ever live stream of a news event in virtual reality. The network is partnering with virtual reality technology platform NextVR to stream the CNN Democratic Presidential Debate live, in full “3D immersive virtual reality”, from Las Vegas, NV.
The Republican debate earlier in September also saw NextVR’s camera array, which recorded the event in 3D 180-degrees from several vantage points. Since the Democratic debate is going to be livestreamed, you’ll be able to catch all the political gaffs and, audience reactions as if you were actually there.