The future of immersive experiences is interactive
Let’s face it, most of the immersive experiences are a unidirectional experience. Showing art work in a 360 projection setting is fine, but it lacks some of the magic we are used to in a real-life experience. Just like a band on the stage wants to connect to their audience, the audience in an immersive experience seeks interaction.
The basics
The most basic interaction is touch. From buttons to touch screens: we are very used to interact with technology through touch. But you can of course also use smartphones to interact with an immersive installation. Which could be a hurdle (sometimes) but if done properly enhances the entire experience.
The frictionless
Most interactivity is based on the user taking action by using touch or pushing things. But an immersive experience is entertainment, laid back and relaxed. The interesting interaction in an immersive experience should be frictionless. With cameras and microphones you can detect motion, conversations and even emotions. For example, if you would track visitors’ hands, you could control experiences as they move. Also, posture detection with the use of AI is becoming mainstream. The real challenge is to use all this data for a group of people. What if you could track everyone in a room and use this to interact with a game or an art work?
The multisensory
What if you could use more than one sense to interact with an installation. Some use electroencephalogram (EEG) data to transform brain activity in to a generated visual in an immersive experience. But you could also measure stress levels with wearables to create for example an even scarier horror escape room. And of course, the real stuff is haptic feedback. Imagine wearing gloves, or even a suit, that gives haptic feedback when you want to grab something or the feeling of an object colliding with your body. That would give a “true” immersive feeling.
Conclusion
The future looks interactive. And the end goal is surely multisensory with no friction at all. At Blue Hay we select the right technology for every interaction whilst keeping the story the main driver for the experience. Our friends of XR Valley organized a webinar on advanced telerobotics with haptic gloves. You can register and check out the recordings here