“Trinity” the first interactive VR sci-fi TV show

In the spring, the VR film studio Unlimited announced a science fiction series where viewers will be able to interact with the characters like never seen before. It will put you in an immersive environment where you become a part of the world itself. The show will be divided up into five episodes of fifteen minutes, and will be readily available on most VR platforms.

“Trinity” plays 2000 years in the future when humans are no longer present on Earth. Rather, the world will be somewhat set in a dystopian future with androids ruling the world. There will be a pocket of robotic resistance where they take a stand against a powerful singularity set to destroy them.

UNLIMITED took a unique approach in filming Trinity where they developed their own proprietary 360 video rig to capture the virtual reality experience. They threaded their captured footage with high-end CGI to create a wonderful and interactive 360 VR experience for the viewers. Many in the filming industry have stated that current 360 cameras just don’t produce the quality necessary to publish on a professional level. Many studios opt-in to creating their own proprietary rigs to capture high quality footage.

Real film and 3D depth information

The scenes were recorded by two cameras at the same time: in addition to a specially developed mobile camera, several volumetric cameras were used to capture the depth information of the immediate environment and the actors present in it.

Afterwards, the team scanned the whole set completely in 3D. The digital information from these three sources were superimposed in the post-production, so they matched. Now the studio could seamlessly switch between the 360-degree real film and the walk-in volumetric environment.

The result is, according to Hamilton, interactive film scenes. The interactive elements were worked with Unity. Here too, the focus was on avoiding visible transitions between live action recordings and digital effects.

The work on Trinity has already been running for a year, the pilot is set to be released later this autumn.