Virtual Reality Production

East City Films has specialised in virtual reality production since 2015. The ultimate VR experience, otherwise known as true VR, is fully interactive and often room scale. Using high-end PC based headsets such as the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive or stand alone headsets such as the Oculus Quest, users can be plunged into worlds in which they can walk around, influence the story and even open doors, feel things and pick things up.

It's important to understand that true interactive virtual reality differs from 360° video. Although both can be experienced through a VR headset, in 360° video the extent of your interaction is your ability to look around in 360 degrees. We call this 3 degrees of freedom VR (3DoF) and it can also be experienced on your phones and computers without a headset. When you start working in full virtual reality the doors are flung open and the levels of interaction increase, from 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF) to hand controls. True VR always involves a VR headset. As a production company specialising in immersive media, East City Films is well versed in both 360° video production and virtual reality experiences.

In virtual reality, we work in game engines such as Unreal and Unity. We are capable of creating fully immersive experiences which are either computer generated using animation and 3D modelling or photo-real using photogrammetry or volumetric capture. These can be interactive, where you can touch and influence what you see and room-scale (with 6DoF) where you can move around the space as if you were actually there. The immersive content that we produce has been recognised around the world and often marries both 360° video and interactive VR production techniques.

We have recently completed production on Common Ground, an interactive VR documentary funded by Digital Catapult and the Arts Council programme Creative XR. This piece of work incorporates stereoscopic 360° video, photogrammetry, CGI, 3 & 6 degrees of freedom and interaction.

We are known as the best VR documentary producers in Europe having had incredible success with our films Witness 360: 7/7, Indefinite and Common Ground. Over the years we have progressed from the monoscopic 360 video of Witness 360: 7/7 to the fully interactive, room-scale game engine VR of Common Ground. We have infused our expertise garnered from these pieces of work across the company, with story-telling prowess being applied to 360 content for brands and with broadcasters such as ITV, MTV and the BBC.

With new headsets coming out regularly we work hard to stay abreast of developments and have worked extensively with Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Go, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Google Cardboard and Daydream. Click here for more information on our preferred headsets.

Be sure to check out our 360° video work here, and if you would like to see our virtual reality work, then that's a great reason to swing by the office. If you want to find out more about our VR and immersive services you’ll find more information here.

If you’ve got an interesting VR project in mind, we’re the virtual reality production company for you.