OC5 Speaker Spotlight: Eric Cheng
Welcome back for another entry in our OC5 Speaker Spotlight series, where we ask our presenters to reflect back on their personal history with VR and look ahead to the next five years. Today, we’re featuring Oculus Head of Immersive Media Eric Cheng, whose OC5 talk “Video That Doesn’t Suck: Stereo(scopic) 3D-180° for VR” will delve into best practices for creating stunning video for distribution and playback on Oculus Go.
Eric Cheng: My first experience with VR was playing Dactyl Nightmare in a mall in the early ’90s. I was in high school, and the ideas presented in those early games, in science fiction books, and in movies like The Lawnmower Man made big impressions. It’s amazing that I’m now able to work on the very technology that inspired me when I was a child.
EC: I always had a notion that VR could change the way we connect with each other, but it didn’t become visceral until I experienced a demo of Oculus Toybox during a visit to Facebook in 2015. Being able to explore a space with someone else, using consumer hardware, totally blew my mind.
EC: Although I have a technical background, I spent nearly a decade creating content in the field as an underwater photographer and publisher. I loved that technical mastery of something like photography could be used to create stories that could open up new worlds for viewers. At some point, it became obvious that imaging technology, both in capture and presentation, was going to fundamentally change the nature of media, so I migrated back to Silicon Valley to focus on the space between technology and creative storytelling. I was drawn to Facebook because of its mission to connect people in meaningful ways, and to Oculus because of its drive to push VR into new territory.
EC: It’s hard for me to choose a single hero, but I’ve always been inspired by artisans who hone a particular craft into mastery. There is irony in claiming “mastery,” because the more one develops a particular skill, the more possibilities open up—it never really ends. My heroes are folks who have a relentless drive in a particular area—music, art, technology, and more—who are not resting on being labeled a “master;” instead, they are constantly pushing into unknown territory.
EC: My focus in VR is how the real world intersects with virtual experiences: How is the real world captured and represented in VR? We’re in the middle of early experimentation in immersive media capture, but we’re at the very beginning of where that journey leads. I’m particularly interested in natural resting points in the technological progression of storytelling, and I think that we’ll likely find one in the next five years. In five years, immersive media could make virtual “teleportation” a standard method of reliving memories.
