Voluverse

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From the product description

About the Experience

It’s exciting see an app that completely focuses on volumetric video. Video like this was unheard of just a few years ago. A traditional video might show a dancer in front of you. With 3D, your eyes get fooled since they each have a different view, but you can’t move your head without breaking the illusion. With volumetric video, you can walk around and see the performance from any angle. It’s really a holographic video!

Voluverse is a free app that showcases captures done by the company Volucap. You can watch sports, news, and training clips and see the amazing difference it makes for real video to have volume. In motion capture, the movements of a real person are applied to the “skeleton” of a 3D model — like puppetry. These videos let you see the original actor from all around. It needs to be seen to really understand it.

Graphics and Sound

Since the focus of Voluverse is to showcase video taken from every angle, the graphics are really good. It’s as close as you can get to feeling like the person is there. Sit on the floor and look at them, stand in front of them, or walk around them while they perform and you’ll feel like you’re in the future! Many of the clips also contain sound, but this isn’t a standout feature.

All captures are done without a background, so it’s usually augment reality playback, rather than virtual reality. In other words, the performers will appear in front of you in your own space. The medical training takes place in an exam room (though you can freely reposition the doctor) and the dancer is on a round rug, but most of them just stand directly on your floor. This makes the appearance even more dramatic since having a grid floor (like Sketchfab) or black background make it seem less realistic. Subjects like musical performers or exercise instructors are perfect for this medium.

Content

The library currently consists of around 20 clips of varying lengths. They are divided into categories such as Prehistoric Studies, Music & Film, Newsroom, and more. Even relatively short ones (< 30sec) are easily 500MB, so be ready to wait for them to download. Some apps do a better job with being able to stream some of the content or start with lower resolution imagery, but these must be downloaded fully before anything renders. They’re generally worth the wait though.

Navigation and Interactivity

The user interface definitely needs attention. The basic thumbnail view is acceptable, and it’s easy enough to click a thumbnail to either start a download or start the playback, but it’s a little harder to click the kebab menu (⁞) in the corner to delete/remove it later. Since the menu doesn’t provide a single place to check downloads in progress or to manage your video storage, you’ll need to scroll around to each video.

Once you’re watching the video, there’s a small card with a Return to Menu button that also includes some thumbnails to watch other videos. This seems like an odd choice since the other videos aren’t necessarily downloaded yet which pulls you out of the video and back to the menu list to start downloading.

In some videos, there’s a “Navigate” menu panel that shows what you’re watching along with a Previous and Next button. For example, the medical demo consists of a set of related clips. If you click Next, prepare to wait. The initial download was only for the first clip, so you’ll need to download the subsequent ones.

You can point your controller at a model and use your grip button to rotate it around or move it closer or further away. This can be handy if they don’t appear quite where you want them.

Much less intuitively, if you select a model with your grip button, you can then click your trigger button to bring up a small “Volumetric” menu. This allows you Play/Pause or mute the model (some videos might have more than one model playing at the same time). There’s also the name of the model or file which doesn’t add much value for most users. It’s nice to be able to see the total time of the video, but oddly you can’t seek forward or backward. There’s also a Stop button for some reason. I’m not sure why you would click that instead of Pause.

Updates and Support

Voluverse seems to be updated every few months. You can support them on Patreon and comment on their posts. Updates aren’t their highest priority, but they are making steady progress. Given that it’s a free app, support is decent.

Summary

Voluverse is a free product that shows off the capabilities of Volucap. I’m not sure that they’re intending to make it a killer app. Their main product (in addition to their VFX work on Netflix shows and movies like Matrix Resurrections) seems to be a content management system for content like this, along with production services and a highly specialized studio for recording these videos. I think it’s a great example of what’s possible, and over 20,000 Patreon supporters agree! If you want to see the future of video in VR, check it out!

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