While at B-Reel, our friends at Google approached us about helping announce and share Google Earth VR with the world. We resolved to create a short launch film and website, that together would reveal the power and beauty behind Google Earth VR.

I had the unique opportunity to be a part of a small core team conceptualizing the film, creating animations, and experimenting with new techniques for sharing a VR experience with the general public.

With the relatively new challenge of showcasing VR in 2D, we researched best practices and developed our own techniques we felt would best showcase the VR app.

Production of the launch film consisted of a live-action shoot, motion-capture, animation, and compositing of assets.

Through the piece, we wanted to showcase the most stunning locations, and feature a diverse range of scenery, while sharing the basics of the Earth VR experience. In our process, we made it a priority to embrace all potential viewers, those with and especially those without, VR accessibility.

As part of our approach to accessibility, we experimented with techniques for sharing 360 experiences. As we worked, we stumbled upon and applied brute-force techniques to create stereoscopic 360 images.

Utilizing the relatively new WebVR spec, released by Google, we created and provided imagery that visitors to the launch site could view in stereoscopic on any VR capable device. Non-VR devices can view imagery in monoscopic with accelerometer controls.

Helping launch Google Earth VR was by and large the product of a very driven and hard working team. From the many hundred-thousands of frames rendered, to the on the fly development as supported by our dev team, we truly performed a massive effort over several months. Please try it out for yourselves!