InterBEE REVIEW2016

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21How do you see the current situation for VR that is attracting increasing attention in both the United States and Japan?Mr. Chabin: VR has the greatest potential among existing platforms. I expect VR will also have a massive effect on education and training in the industrial field by taking advantage of its rich expressive power in addition to the movie and entertainment fields. This is not just a movie theater issue like with 3D; we are in contact with companies outside the movie industry, such as Intel, Google and Hewlett-Packard. I expect this will increase the range of the industry.This will no doubt become a global trend. It is possible to see companies in the United States, Europe, Japan and China coming to utilize VR. This is at a completely different level of the excite-ment over 3D. It is very important that companies which think seriously about how to make people happy and enter-tain people with VR like The Virtual Company where Mr. Guy Primus serves as CEO steadily enter this industry and take on new challenges in VR.theaters, but this has not yet spread widely in homes.It is necessary to think about what the industry as a whole should do to popularize VR upon analyzing 3D stereoscopic viewing so that we do not go down the same path as that technol-ogy. It is not true that any content in VR is good. I think it is important to thor-oughly think about whether a work is suitable for VR.What is important to develop the VR market?Mr. Primus: It is not that straightfor-ward to produce really attractive VR content. It is important to use VR after investigating and researching its features and the optimum production techniques.Mr. Chabin: Game machines like the PlayStation that allow people to enjoy VR software have spread widely. I think that 2017 will be year one of VR and welcome in a massive increase in popularity of VR. VR is sustainable and will become a pow-erful foundation of business. I would like to encourage many companies to proac-tively invest in this technology.Mr. Kawai: We have already started to find various problems that need addressing when we perceived VR from the viewpoint of the user. The under-standing of the basic cognitive charac-teristics of VR is one of these. I wonder what impact VR will have on the behav-ior of people from the viewpoint of human engineering that is my specialty. I would like to think about this including both the positive and negative aspects.For example, in terms of the positive aspects, I wonder what kind of value VR will give users and society. I think it is very important to continue clarifying this. I would like to carefully organize/ analyze content and turn the tacit knowledge possessed by creators into tools to contribute to the creation of an environment in which it is possible to make even higher quality content.Investigations and research are essential to master VRWill VR become established as a new form of content instead of proving a passing phase?Mr. Primus: VR is a ground-breaking technology that enables new video expressions. However, attractive con-tent is not created with technology alone. The stories of works are the most important thing to establish VR as a new form of content. The existence of excellent storytellers is indispensable.There are excellent storytellers with a proven track record in major movie companies. We employ Robert Strom-berg, who was involved in the produc-tion of the Avatar movie by the director James Cameron, as one of the heads in our company. It is reassuring to have one of the big names in the industry. There are high expectations from the industry as a whole.Mr. Kawai: It is impossible not to think about 3D stereoscopic viewing when talking about VR. It is possible to see 3D stereoscopic viewing in movie VR will spread to all industriesThe life of content is the story