Netflix Hack Day is a recurring event at the popular video-streaming company where employees spend 24 hours building cool experiments for the platform. One such experiment is ‘Oculix’ a virtual reality version of Netflix which supports the Oculus Rift and the Leap Motion gesture controller.
During the company’s Summer ‘Hack Day’ last week, some 150 employees at Netflix sat down for a 24 hour hackathon. From that session came ‘Oculix’ which uses the Oculus Rift DK1 VR headset and the Leap Motion gesture controller.
Oculix puts users inside of a virtual reality version of the Netflix interface, allowing them to scroll through videos using hand gestures from the Leap. Once a video is selected, the user zooms forward into a virtual theater to enjoy the show.
Neflix notes that “while we think these hacks are very cool and fun, they may never become part of the Netflix product, internal infrastructure, or otherwise be used beyond Hack Day.” Still, seeing that a small group was able to come up with a workable virtual reality version of Netflix in less than 24 hours means it isn’t totally unthinkable that we’d see support for the Oculus Rift if the VR headset gains mainstream traction.