Hololens used in production of Ready Player One

Upcoming big budget movie Ready Player One is largely set in VR and AR, so it is appropriate that the technology played a big role in the production of the title.

Much of Ready Player One is set in Oasis, a massive collection of digital “planets” which presented some difficulty in recording some of the more complex scenes.

Director Steven Spielberg revealed he used VR headsets and the HoloLens to make this somewhat easier.

Slashfilm records him as saying:

You have to understand that we made the movie in an abstract set. The only way the cast had a chance to understand where they were – we all had virtual reality Oculus goggles. Inside the goggles was a complete build of the set that you [see in] the movie. When you took the goggles off, it was a bit white space. It was a 4,000 square foot empty space called a volume. When you put the goggles on, it was Aech’s basement, or Aech’s workshop, or the Distracted Globe [club]. So the actors had a chance to say, ‘OK, if I walk over there, there’s the door. There’s the DJ.’ It was really an out of body experience filming this movie. It’s very hard to really express what that was like.

Girish Balakrishnan, the lead virtual production developer for Digital Domain, expanded further saying the team used the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and HoloLens during different stages of production.

Rift DK2 was used in mocap because we were able to get it with a 60 ft tether and have it tracked in-engine.
Vive was a useful portable setup to scout scenes in VR. We can quickly set-up a unit in a conference room or smaller volume for review.
Hololens is limited but freeing.

— Girish Balakrishnan (@_MasterG_) March 18, 2018

According to recent reports, Hololens is finally gaining traction in the industry and is seeing increasing application and interest from industry, includingnew adult titles it seems.

Hopefully, this will prompt Microsoft to finally release the successor the technology deserves.