Whether they’re real or not, virtual reality technologies bring people together, along with places.
A few days ago the market saw the release of Oculus Go, the latest virtual reality addition to Facebook, with the optimistic objective of racking up one billion buyers.
Virtual and advanced reality will, according to the ambitions of Menlo Park, bring about an evolution in interpersonal communication, allowing people far away from one another to communicate as if they were in the same place. In other words, it will enhance the functions of social networks.
And what about culture and travel? It’s one thing to visit a place steeped in history and imagine it in a different time, it’s quite another to immerse yourself directly in that time. That’s what start-up HTC Vive has tried to do with Beyond the Castle, a virtual reality tour that takes us back to Renaissance times to visit Sforza Castle, one of the symbols of Milan, and actively explore it in that period. Users do, of course, need to wear a visor for the virtual reality experience, along with earphones and two joysticks. It allows them to travel back in time and join the ladies and knights of the era, experience the Castle as it originally was and even impersonate an archer. The project was based on meticulous research of the customs and costumes of the era using printed sources, maps, and paintings. The ambition of the founder of HTC Vive, Marco Arena, is to replicate the same experience in other castles, of which there are 20,000 in Italy alone.
Taking the concept further, it would be interesting to explore the potential of similar technologies for film tourism. There has already been talk of virtual tours run by the Casa del Cinema in Trieste, which plunge users into film and TV series locations, allowing them to see them through the scenes that were filmed there and hear the voices of the characters involved, learning anecdotes and trivia. But imagine what it would be like to be part of the audience at the Colosseum at the height of its use as Russell Crowe fights to show the emperor his strength as General Maximus Decimus in a scene from Gladiator. Or, taking another leap through time, participating in the memorable dance by Luchino Visconti at Palazzo Valguarnera-Gangi (Palermo) in The Leopard.
It is an experience that would have real potential in Italy, given the countless palaces, monuments and landscapes that have provided the backdrop to so many films.